


Through Awe and Smoke

by majorityx



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-22
Packaged: 2017-12-10 18:28:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 62,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/majorityx/pseuds/majorityx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Although Castiel is the one who has fallen and is struggling to find his place in a human world, Dean may be the one who has to make the hardest journey of all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a completed work of 64,000 words in total. Gratitude to Cerisaye for proofing this and much more besides.

Chapter 1

If there was one thing better than arguing with an angel (well, ex-angel, but Dean wasn’t even going to go there. A buzz was a buzz and why waste good whisky on bad thoughts?) it was listening to his baby brother argue with one. Because, damn it, Dean had to admit, Sammy was really, really good at it, because Sammy, the freak, just didn’t get it. Didn’t get the increasingly tight tone of the angel’s voice, the slowing of his intonation, the barely concealed fury – fury which he would unleash if arguing with Dean, but kept under control with the younger Winchester. Whether out of respect or fondness Dean was never sure. Sammy thought they were having a genuine discussion, that opinions were being respected, that he was putting his point forcibly and convincingly. Only Dean knew that Castiel was probably thinking about ants or wondering why he was arguing with bacteria. Yep, only thing better than arguing with the son-of-a-bitch himself was to listen to his baby brother doing it. 

Dean stretched more comfortably on the couch, took another long swallow of mellow, amber goodness and smirked, clicking the remote to another channel. Bliss. 

End of the world aside, Dean had a precious window of peace, a glass of whisky and something mindless on the TV. Yes, he also had a fallen angel struggling to find his way in a human body and no real idea what to do with his mission, but Dean wasn’t one to worry overmuch about the big things. Couch, whisky, TV. And a pissed off ex-angel and baby brother now storming into his little bubble of peace to ask his opinion on the various merits of their argument. Dean sighed and took a long, unnecessary draw on his drink and waved the glass at them. “And?”

Sammy looked annoyed and sat down on the chair opposite waving his hands as if he could visibly draw his argument and make it clearer and more appealing to Dean. “I think…”

What he thought didn’t get far as the other figure in the room marched up into Sammy’s personal space and said very distinctly, “We do not need to involve your brother in this.” 

Dean leaned dramatically (and, okay, a little theatrically) to one side and waved his glass at Sammy to continue. “You’ve been involving the whole damn state with this for the last hour. What’s with, Sammy?”

Sam glanced uneasily at the furious figure looming over him but continued, “I think we should get an anti-possession tattoo for Castiel now because….”

“Sam. Stop speaking. I am an angel of the lord. I do not need…”

“Dean! Back me up here. He’s human. He’s a liability. He needs…”

“Your brother does not have a say in this. If I say…”

Dean stood up from his comfortable slouch and stretched, his T-shirt riding up over his stomach. He was slightly amused that this caused the angel to stop pontificating. He pursed his lips as if giving the relative arguments due weight. Obviously, if Castiel felt he could not be possessed then he knew best. Whether Cas was technically an angel or now an ex-angel was a still perplexing issue. He could not fly, but he didn’t sleep much. He didn’t eat yet, but he did, occasionally, dehydrate and need to drink water. He couldn’t heal anymore, but he didn’t get injured as much as the brothers either. It was unpredictable, and unreliable. That he didn’t want or need an anti-possession tattoo was clear, and Dean knew whose side of the argument he was on. So it was with a very self-satisfying (but carefully hidden) smirk that he said casually, “Sam’s right, Cas, you need to get inked up now. Human an’ all.”

And there it was. The moment Dean waited for all day (and caused if he could). Better than arguing with the angel, better than listening to him arguing with someone else, - that moment when Castiel tried to do what he’d done his whole relationship with the Winchester’s. When annoyed, when crossed, when just pissed off with Dean – leave. Instantly. Blink out. Leave the humans fuming and impotent. But, oh, how much fun was this..? now he… couldn’t. But he never remembered. Every _single _time. Face scrunched up in outrage at being crossed. Shoulders hunched to extend his metaphorical wings and fly, frown of concentration and then… nothing. Like a baby unable to poop. It got Dean every time. It was hilarious. Because what could you do if you’d been able to blink out of existence any and every time you were crossed? For millennia. Never having to stay to face the fall out of failed interactions with lesser beings. You did the only thing you could do. You pulled the tatters of your dignity around you. You turned slowly on your heel and you… walked away. Stomped even. And Dean had to give the angel that. He still had the strut. Still managed to leave his audience with the impression that they’d been dealing with an angel of the lord. But somehow, this only made it funnier. Dean could taste the fury, the impotence radiating off the slim figure. Better than the whisky still stinging his tongue. He’d pissed Cas off. It was such a good start to any day.__

The falling had happened gradually as far as the humans were aware. An injury on a hunt, a sleeping Cas in the back seat of the Impala for a whole hour, a willingness to ride with them when flying would have seemed the obvious choice. Perhaps to Castiel the change had been frighteningly abrupt. With experience of time over thousands of years, change over a few weeks must have seemed astonishingly fast. But before Dean knew what was happening it was almost over. They had an ex-angel on their hands who couldn’t fly, couldn’t heal and had the world’s most pissy attitude to it all. And to be fair to him, who wouldn’t be pissy? Dean did sympathise, he really did. He tried to help. He tried to be… nice? But pissy had been taken to a whole new level by this newly formed human and pissy had to have a focus, something to blame, and what could be more natural than to blame the one who had caused it all. Castiel had fallen for Dean. Castiel was now vulnerable, weak, mortal, hungry, thirsty, in pain, tired and completely and utterly furious with Dean. It had all seemed so… heroic. Romantic almost. In the true sense of that. Something for the great tales of their time. An angel of unimaginable power falling to help a human with his quest. What Castiel had failed utterly to take into consideration was the actual reality of that fall. After all, how could a creature made of light and energy anticipate gravity and pain? How could something unbound by time come to terms with sleep? Or worse, insomnia. How could an angel who fed on God’s love now have to chew and clean its teeth and constantly (or so it seemed to him) empty its vessel of toxins and clean it and maintain it and move it in such slow time around an ever increasingly tight circle of confinement? And therein lay the major problem. In Castiel’s mind he was still an angel. He had all his memory. He had his knowledge and his awesome mental powers. And as far as he was concerned, he occupied a vessel. A meat suit. A mud-monkey persuaded by a light trick and some broken promises to allow him to ride it around. He and the body were still oddly… separate. He couldn’t ask humans how they felt about their bodies because he was an angel of the lord and that was beneath him. But he assumed they didn’t feel as he did – a red sun imploding, a hurricane of oxygen twisting in a vacuum, a tsunami trapped in a teardrop. He still had to think to consciously move the vessel. It wasn’t him any more than the clothes the humans wore were them. But he couldn’t express any of this. He rarely expressed anything to anyone because who would listen? Babies whined, apparently. Yeah, and angels of the lord smote. Unable and utterly unwilling to articulate his fall, he was left with nothing but anger. Fury. And it grew. And grew. 

 

Sammy screwed up his face at the abrupt departure and began to argue his case once more with Dean, but with a dismissive wave Dean cut him off. “Leave it, Sammy.” 

“Dean, he needs…”

It could have been guilt, or maybe just too much whisky too early in the day, but a look passed over Dean’s face as if he were well aware that the angel needed many things he wasn’t currently getting. He sighed and wondered not for the first time why he was being such a jerk to the guy. He pushed his hands into his pockets and hunched. “I’ll go talk to him.” Damn, what a way to waste such a great pissy exit.

Dean found the angel leaning up against the hood of the Impala, hands deep in pockets, toeing the dust of the yard, studying the small patterns his boots made beneath him. Maybe he was drawing angel banishing sigils, trying in vain to send himself to a better place. Dean came closer, slowly. “You’ve spelt fuck wrong.” Castiel didn’t raise his head or acknowledge the joke.

Dean pursed his lips and hopped up onto the hood next to him. “But Dean’s a dick is pretty catchy. ”

Castiel sighed and stopped his small artwork project, straightening and staring off into the distance. “What do you want, Dean?”

“World peace? A night with the Olsen twins?” Castiel turned his head and gave him a sour look. Dean tried a smile but it wasn’t one of his best. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Look, you can’t keep pissing off every time…”

“I can do what I like, Dean. I believe that is the whole point of free will. I believe that is the whole point of what I am doing here, like this, that I can, as you say, piss off any time I feel like it.” As if proving his words, he pushed off the car and began to stride away. And he hadn’t even done the baby pooping thing. Dean slid off the car and jogged up to catch his arm, smirking quietly to himself so, utterly unprepared and off guard, Castiel’s swing, fast from the momentum of his turn, caught him viciously on one cheekbone and he went down. By reflex he got his hands down to break his fall but felt it through his wrists, his palms grazing on the rough sand of the yard. 

“Son of a bitch.” He put his hand up to his eye. “You son of a bitch! You hit me!”

To give him his due, Castiel looked as surprised as Dean at this unfortunate turn of events. He put a tentative hand out as if on reflex – Dean down, Dean needs help – but then withdrew it, possibly thinking more along the lines of fuck and Dean’s a dick. He hesitated, frowned then put out his hand once more. “You should have ducked.”

Ignoring the hand, Dean scrambled to his feet. “Sorry, Dean. I’m being a freaking bitch, Dean! Not I should have ducked! Hell, Cas, you don’t go around hitting people because you’re pissed off at the world.”

Castiel seemed about to make an angry retort but suddenly looked down at his hand, closing it into a fist. He frowned deeply, studying his knuckles and said quietly, “Ow.” 

Dean felt some of his anger drain away at the look on the angel’s face. “Not so much fun when you can’t heal, huh?”

Castiel looked up quickly. “I would have healed you first.”

And Dean couldn’t deny that. Cas would have healed him first. He stepped closer to the angel, into his personal space, bending his head slightly to catch the blue gaze and hold it. For all he was a human now, for all he was, to all intents and purposes, no different to Jimmy Novak, Dean saw only the angel behind the face of this man, saw still his otherness. “You’ve gotta pull this together, Cas.” He indicated his cheekbone with a brief wave of his hand. “A freebie, cus I know you’re hurting. But get it together. Get your head back in the game. We can’t carry you.” He shot his hand out and grabbed Castiel’s arm, forestalling any attempt at another abrupt departure. “Are we good?”

Castiel shook his hand off and glanced down at where he’d been held. He raised his eyes slowly. “I think that you would have to define your use of the word good. I am standing in the dirt of an insignificant yard having a conversation with something I used to study after stepping on it.” He hit the ground slightly harder than Dean had but with more grace, being still angelically inclined. He didn’t bother to rise or wipe the blood from his split lip. He spat into the dirt. “Oh, that definition of good then.”

Dean stomped back to the house, hoping that anyone watching the whole exchange would get that he was not to blame for just kicking heaven’s most obnoxious angel when he was down. Sam looked up from his paper as he slammed through to the kitchen. “Talk to him?”

“Yep. What’s to eat?”


	2. Chapter 2

Perhaps angels, fallen angels - falling angels - developed testosterone in proportion to their angelic obnoxiousness. Because living with human Castiel was increasingly like living with a cage fighter on crack. He seemed to bounce off the walls with frustration at the human processes he was forced to accept as now his lot in life. But being an angel of the lord, and above overt displays of human weakness, this bouncing was contained beneath a façade of detachment and calm. When he wasn’t punching Dean, that is. Dean and Sam had spent a lifetime together, fitting around each other, accommodating quirks and very different personalities as all families do. Bobby was comfortable: their sense of home. Now a grenade had fallen into this illusion of normality and no one was happy. It had started with laundry. It was one of the first signs of his falling, other than the wounds that wouldn’t heal, that Cas couldn’t maintain his vessel or clothes any more when they got ganked. Returning one evening from a very basic salt and burn, covered in dirt from the gravesite, Castiel had frowned briefly and started to brush at his coat. Then he’d noticed his nails, black with dirt. Dean, watching this in the mirror, smirked and nudged Sam oblivious in the passenger seat. “Getting a nice peach fuzz there as well, Cas.” Sam turned in his seat to stare but added more helpfully, “Need us to stop and buy you a razor?” 

That evening Cas had appeared in a spotless button down white shirt and black jeans with his jaw clenched tightly under smooth, not-a-sign-of-stubble skin. He threw himself into a chair and stared aggressively at the TV, daring anyone to comment. Sam raised his eyebrows and flicked a gaze at Dean. Dean grinned. “First time an iron’s ever been used in this house. Didn’t know Bobby owned one.”

“Things you don’t know about me, idjit, would fill a damn library. Ignore them, Feathers. Man’s got standards.”

“I have every intention of ignoring them.” He continued his fascinated absorption in the show. 

Still grinning, Dean got up and stretched elaborately. “Think I’ll follow your excellent example, Cas. Man’s gotta have standards now, ‘parently.” He sauntered towards the stairs and jogged up, and all was quiet until Sam and Bobby flinched at an outraged yelling from above. Castiel maintained his fixed interest on the show. “Hey, asswipe, up here, now!”

“Err, I think Dean’s….” said Sammy, unhelpfully. 

Bobby yelled back toward the ceiling, “You better be fighting demons up there, son, making that kinda noise.”

Dean came pounding down the stairs, arms full of clothes and towels, all dripping wet and leaving a trail across the old boards of the house. He dumped the lot on Castiel. “And there’s no Goddamned hot water left.” Castiel sprang to his feet, the sodden clothes falling to the floor. Dean kicked the bundle to one side and began to prod the angel’s spotless shirt with a finger. “One, if you shower, you clean the bathroom afterwards. Two, if you take off clothes you pick them up and wash them. Three, towels are….”

“I do not do laundry.”

“Huh?” It was a bit of a conversation stopper to a man who’d been doing laundry since he was four.

“Laundry is woman’s work. It is not fitting for an angel of….”

“You did _not _just say that.” Dean turned for backup to Sam and Bobby and they both nodded enthusiastically, agreeing that he had. He turned back around. “Woman’s work. What century, exactly, did you fall in, Cas?”__

Castiel, as usual, was totally unmoved by Dean’s sarcasm. “God created women to…”

“God created women for lots of fricking stuff we ain’t getting much of in case you didn’t notice. Pick it up.” He toed one of the many wet towels on the floor.

“No. I apologise for taking all the hot water however.”

“Yeah, whatever. Pick up the clothes.”

Sam slid between the furious men and knelt to sweep the clothes into a pile. Dean put a hand out to prevent him but Bobby said, “Dean,” in a tone of voice that Dean could not ignore. He nodded softly at Castiel. “Later.”

Castiel held his gaze. “Perhaps when Sam has finished the laundry?”

Dean only backed off because Bobby’s grip on his arm was painfully tight and the old hunter was almost growling in displeasure at the tension he could feel radiating through Dean’s shirt. He backed into the kitchen, his gaze never leaving Castiel’s. Bobby sighed with relief and planted him firmly into a chair. “You damn idjit, Dean. Do you never learn?” 

“Me! What about him? Dammit, Bobby, you wouldn’t have let me or Sammy get away with that shit when we were kids let alone….”

“Exactly, fool. That damn angel of yours has never been a kid. Who’s taught him a damn thing except a sense of heavenly entitlement? Who knows what the feathery creature thinks about any of this. He’s angry and he’s hurting and you’re not helping.”

“You want me to kneel to him and pick up his freaking laundry?”

“Your brother did. Didn’t see him complaining any.”

“Well, I guess Samantha was doing the woman’s work after all.” Dean groaned and sank his head into his hands.

Bobby huffed lightly. “I’m thinking that little angelic announcement best be forgotten. Or on second thoughts, maybe we could mention it to Ellen next time she’s around.”

Dean smiled and shook his head. “What am I gonna do, Bobby? I’m butting my head ‘gainst him every turn.”

“Try using your damn head for something better then. You’ve got a good brain, well you’ve got a brain. Use it.”

Dean discovered Castiel perched on a counter in the basement watching the laundry turn in apparent quiet fascination. He looked up when Dean came in. “I’m thinking this is the later you referred to.”

Dean narrowed his eyes, debating whether to rise to the challenge, but he was tired of it and only leant up against the counter across from Cas. He nodded toward the machine. “Found a woman then.”

Cas’s jaw clenched and he replied quietly, “No, I found someone to show me how to use the machine. It seemed easier. Sam was very helpful.” The implication was so clear Dean was momentarily silenced. He huffed. “You only had to ask.”

Castiel stared at him intently. He slid off the counter into Dean’s personal space. Dean leant back, wary. Castiel seemed unable to keep a small smirk off his face at the flinch from the taller man. He beckoned Dean to lean closer with a slight gesture of one hand then said close to his ear. “You should learn to listen better.”

They were molecules apart. Dean could see up close the immaculate shave Castiel had given himself, could smell the freshly watched hair. He swallowed audibly. Castiel narrowed his eyes, flicked them down to Dean’s lips then smirked again and swung away to return to his perch on the counter. 

Dean fully expected Castiel to falter in his newfound design to be the cleanest ex-angel in the hunting community when he realised how much work it entailed. It was unrealistic and awkward given the shit they waded through on a daily basis. But Castiel bent things to his will, forced his human life to conform to his standards whenever he could and this was one battle he wasn’t going to lose. Sometimes he showered two or three times a day. He shaved twice, dressed in ironed clothes, often still wore a shirt and tie. His only concession to slackness was his hair, which seemed to amuse him left long and tousled on top with feathery bits falling over his forehead. Coming into the kitchen one day, Dean heard Sam and Cas talking quietly at the table. He hung back, shamelessly eavesdropping. He couldn’t seem to exchange two words with the angel without it descending into a slanging match or stony silences, so he was curious what his younger brother found to talk about so easily. It appeared that Sam was trying to persuade Cas to relax a little. Loosen the tie, metaphorically. He heard Castiel’s light huff of annoyance. “I am showing respect, Sam. You of all people should understand that.”

“Respect. Like to Dean and me? I don’t get it.”

Castiel actually laughed a little. It was an almost inhuman sound. “Not to you, Sam, and certainly not to your brother.” Dean clenched his teeth and pictured his fist connecting yet again with that arrogant face. “I’m showing respect to my vessel. This is how he looked when he gave himself to me. “

“I am never going to get used to you saying that, Cas. Think you could maybe rephrase?”

Dean grinned. He could picture the pained expression of utter confusion on Cas’s face. “He dressed for me, Sam, and prepared himself to carry an angel of the Lord. Although he is no longer sharing this vessel with me, I do not feel personal attachment to it. I honour his sacrifice.”

“Bullshit.” Dean rolled around the doorframe and sauntered to the fridge to get a beer. “We believed all that crap once, Cas, but that’s bullshit and you know it.”

Castiel gritted his teeth. “Perhaps I was not speaking clearly enough for you to hear me standing outside the door.”

“My house, my rules. See I think you like that vessel of yours well enough.”

Sam’s eyes were following the argument like a man watching a particularly fast game of tennis. “Bobby said….”

“Shut up, Sam,” was chorused by the older pair. They glared at each, furious that they’d finally agreed on something. Dean slid up onto the counter and waved his beer at Cas. “See, you had the choice of thousands of vessels, I’m thinking, and you know what? I don’t see any of your dickhead brothers going for one like yours. I think you like that vessel more than you’re letting on. I think all the….” He waved his hand airily around his head, “Poofy hair and baby blues was a deliberate choice. What do you think Sammy?”

“Huh?”

“Prettiest angel in the garrison, Cas? Better than looking like old Zachariah, hey?”

Castiel stood up. He glanced down at his body and then up towards Dean. “As usual Dean I think you have missed the point.” He walked over and stood in Dean’s space, nodded politely then reached around him, took a glass of water, raised an eyebrow at Dean’s flinch and then returned to his seat. “After I retrieved you from hell, you were unable to see my true form. I had a very short space of time to make the necessary contact with you and tell you of your mission. This vessel was chosen to make that initial meeting more successful. Dean, this vessel was chosen to please you, not me.” He took a small sip of water then rose gracefully and nodded at Sam. “If you will excuse me I have shoes to polish.”


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Since human Cas had fallen into his life, Dean sometimes felt like a man on a tiny island being assaulted on all sides by the incoming tide, solid ground disappearing beneath his feet. His one source of security left was the Impala. Driver’s rules. Here _he, _called the shots. The angel shut his mouth and sat in the back. He could often feel Cas’s glare on the back of his neck as he drove. He only swung the mirror slightly to grin annoyingly back at him and make inane comments on things Castiel could not follow as he still had thirty years of cultural references to catch up on. Sometimes Dean couldn’t believe the sheer ignorance of the man. Who hadn’t heard of fricking Obi Wan? He glared at Castiel’s familiar look of superior ignorance. “How come, Sammy, a fricking angel that is supposed to have watched mankind for thousands of years, hasn’t watched the most influential movie in the entire history of the world? Can you answer me that?” Sam didn’t even bother to look up from his book. He knew by now that neither of them was really talking to him.__

Cas leant forward so he could be heard over the blaring music. “Do you seriously think that I would waste my time watching someone watch television? If the whole of earth’s history condensed down to one year, Dean, the human part of that would equate to about five minutes. I had other things to do for those five minutes. Like polish my sword.”

Sam grinned covertly and snickered silently. Dean pointedly swung the mirror back to its rightful position and turned up the music. Sam debated calling Bobby. He’d been told he could for moments of sanity. Bobby had given him a _don’t envy you those two idjits _look when they’d driven away. He was reaching for his phone when Dean said, deceptively casually, “So, Cas, still a virgin, huh?”__

“Dean!” Sam was outraged and embarrassed on the angel’s account, but Dean countered reasonably, as if this was a normal thing to ask a thirty-something guy in the back seat of your car, “No, it’s okay, Sammy, we talked about this, didn’t we, Cas. You know, your little problem.” The air quotes were done with just the right amount of concerned sarcasm. 

Cas, pointedly staring out of the side window, rejoined, “When you took me to a whorehouse, you mean.” Then added, “For my first time.”

“Dean!” Sam was deciding he needed a new script. Repeatedly saying his douchebag brother’s name in increasingly outraged tones wasn’t contributing much to the conversation. He turned around to Cas. “Hey, look, when we get to town tonight how about I take you to a nice place. I mean a bar or club or something,” he added hurriedly. “Meet some nice women, maybe.”

Cas turned to look at him, flicked a small covert glance to Dean’s shoulder and nodded pleasantly. “I would enjoy that very much. Thank you, Sam. Although I should point out,” and he rested his gaze more noticeably to the side of Dean’s face, “that of the three of us I am the only one who has been married twice, fathered a child, had a job and owned a house. Two technically. I am not sure which of us most qualifies for the virgin badge therefore.”

“Hey.” The car swerved at Dean’s abrupt twist in the seat and Sam’s yelled _eyes on the damn road, Dude! _so he flicked the mirror back to its annoy-Cas mode and glared into it. “I’m pretty damn certain you weren’t in John-boy when he was doing the married-biz with Amelia, and you sure as hell didn’t go to work or father Claire.”__

Cas kept Dean’s gaze then shrugged in a gesture he’d clearly been practising. “My mistake. I have clearly neither been thinking about nor memorising enough the exact timeline of my sex life.” He didn’t need to emphasis the _I have not _. Dean got the implication.__

Sam put a hand on Dean’s arm, and before he could lose some fingers said, “Diner. Over there. I could eat something. Anyone else eat something?” _Please! ___

Dean, teeth gritted, pulled Baby over harder than he would usually do and slammed into a parking space. He didn’t slam the door, because, come on, this was Baby, but it was a pretty loud metaphorical slam nonetheless. Sam turned to look at Cas who appeared serene as usual in his accustomed place in the back seat. “Dude, seriously?” Cas turned his face to Sam’s, an eyebrow raised in innocent enquiry. Sam shook his head. “Don’t even.” Cas pursed his lips, narrowed his eyes but then shoved out of the car with as little grace as the other. Sam rolled his eyes to heaven neither expecting nor receiving respite.

The food gave them all an illusion of peace for a while. At least when he was eating Dean couldn’t ride Cas and when Cas was engaged watching Dean eat he had nothing much to rise to. Sam savoured the grilled chicken breast he was chewing and the peace in equal measure. It didn’t last long. “Quit staring at me, Dude.” 

Cas flicked his eyes away from Dean’s burger and stared out the window with equal intensity. Speaking with his mouth full and waving his half-eaten burger around, Dean murmured, “This is seriously good, Cas…. You’re missing out. Mmm. Meat, dripping cheese….”

“I do not need to eat.” The gravity of this assertion was somewhat ruined by a very prolonged and audible rumble from the angel’s stomach. Sam didn’t think it was possible for anyone to grit their teeth more than Cas currently was, but somehow the angel managed it. His hand gave a tiny, independent twitch on the tablecloth however. It looked as if it were signalling for help, separate and alive from the dumbass wearing the rest of the body. Sam frowned. Cas slid his hands under the table.

Dean sniffed loudly and laid his burger down, wiping his mouth slowly on his napkin. He studied the turned profile for a while; Cas’s face a pale ghostly twin in the window against the dark night outside. Very slowly he slid his bowl of hot, crispy fries across the table. “I’m full. You want? Don’t wanna waste ‘em.” He picked up his burger and took a huge bite and began a long, inconsequential conversation with Sammy about diners, waitresses and the various merits of burgers. 

Cas stared at the fries for a long time with a look as if someone had served him up his son and heir, sliced and diced and juicy sweet. Horror, longing and sadness twisted up his face in equal measure. At last the longing seemed to win. A hand emerged from under the table and he began to eat. It was painful to watch. Each swallow seemed to be accompanied by a nail in the coffin moment of pain, as though the fries stuck in his throat physically as well as metaphorically. Oblivious now to Cas, twisted in his seat facing Sammy, Dean continued his ramblings, occasionally poking Sam in the shoulder to keep his attention on him and his fascinating thoughts. But after a minute he pushed the remainder of his soda across the table next to the bowl of fries. 

That was accepted as well.

The rest of the trip through the long night to the town of Fort Elizabeth was conducted in silence. Sam had the odd feeling that battles had been won and lost, tactics reassessed and new strategies planned, only he had absolutely no idea on whose side the victory lay. If anyone’s.


	4. Chapter 4

Fort Elizabeth seemed oddly named as there was no fort and no apparent link to anyone called Elizabeth. However, odd was their business, and these things paled into insignificance against the reason for their trip: missing children. Not that children going missing in America was that unusual, but it was in the numbers going missing from this town: fifteen in the last three weeks. Way above the national average for a town population 12,506 - even for a country that appeared to manage to lose one of its children every forty seconds or so. But it wasn’t actually that fifteen went missing. It was that fifteen returned. Which was all good, and as it should be, except that news of the returns had been… squashed. That was the only way Sam could describe it. Huge publicity for the missing… almost nothing for the returned. Missing kid - end of the world, parents distraught, emotional appeals on TV, ribbons, national fundraising, rewards posted, shrines established, lots of praying. The usual usual. Returned kid however – Tayna Robbins was found unharmed in the small town of Fort Elizabeth… Nate Martin’s family wish to thank well wishers for their support … and that’s where strange really came in.

Dean sat wearily opposite Sam at the small table in their motel room drumming his fingers absently against his glass. Castiel stood at the window, staring with apparent fascination at the car park. Dean let him. You had to get your kicks somewhere, he reckoned. “So, what are we thinking, Sammy? Demons? Witches? Ghosts? New bunch of weird fuckers we’ve not come across yet?” He stretched out a leg, cramped from the long night drive and groaned at the pain in his knee.

“Perhaps the parents of these children decided that they had had enough false sympathy and merely took a more dignified approach to the return.” Both brothers turned to the angel, slightly surprised by his contribution. 

Dean narrowed his eyes. “False sympathy?”

Castiel shrugged. “The prayers were.”

“Huh?” Sammy glanced nervously at Dean who was rising and walking towards Castiel. 

“You got something to say here, Cas?”

Castiel turned, a patient and yet oddly impatient look on his face, which Sam had to admit was a neat trick. “I used to hear such prayers frequently. They were tiring and grated on the nerves.”

“The prayers of parents for their missing frickin’ kids grated on your nerves. During those five minutes of human history you weren’t watching.”

“No, Dean, you deliberately misunderstand me.” An _as usual _wasn’t added but it was there nevertheless. “The prayers from strangers who did not know the children or their families. They were praying for their own reasons. It is hard to explain.” To give the angel his due, he seemed to be genuinely trying to make Dean understand. He caught Dean’s gaze and held it, “You understand the nuance of human speech and I do not. I understand the nuance of human prayer and you do not.”__

__“Alright, I’ll buy it. But how does that help here?”_ _

__Castiel shrugged in that irritating way he’d obviously picked up from Dean. “Perhaps it doesn’t. Only if I had lost a child and then found it again I would be quiet. I think.” He frowned as if his words confused him as well._ _

__Dean nodded wisely as if he understood and then made a bitch face. “Okay, useless. Sammy, you got anything better?” He turned back to his brother at the laptop._ _

__“I am going out.”_ _

__Dean swung around sharply at Castiel’s announcement. “Huh? What do you mean, out?”_ _

__“I mean somewhere that is not in this room and therefore defined as out.”_ _

__“No, I got that, dumbass, but we don’t know what this is yet, so we stay here ‘till we do. Got it?”_ _

__“I believe you have just called me useless, so I am going out. For a walk.” He studied the ceiling for a moment. “I may find a bar. As Sam suggested.” Sam had also suggested what else Castiel might find in that bar, but perhaps, wisely, the angel didn’t add this. Dean moved over to stand in front of the door. Sam shifted nervously in his seat. This was brewing up to a confrontation he didn’t want them to have, didn’t want them to have in a motel room and particularly didn’t want them have in front of him._ _

__“Listen, Cas….”_ _

__“No, Dean, I do not want to listen to you any longer. I have done nothing but listen to you since I…. I need to….” He clenched his jaw on the words, seemingly unable to actually articulate what he needed. He glanced out of the window despairingly. “Air. I think I need to breathe.”_ _

__Dean blinked, licked his lips and stepped aside. “Don’t go far, hey? And maybe not the bar until we know what we’ve got here? And, cus, like, it’s breakfast time?”_ _

__Castiel looked surprised for a moment then nodded and slid gratefully through the door to stand next to the car, his face turned up to the heavens. Dean watched him for a moment through the open door. He had the distinct impression that Cas was not praying. But then the sad thought crept over him that perhaps for the first time it had hit the angel that he could now no longer hear prayer either. He shut the door quietly and returned to his seat, rubbing his hand slowly over his face._ _

__“You shouldn’t provoke him all the time, Dean.”_ _

__“Shut up, Sam. He’s like a freakin’ teenager, hearing stuff that ain’t intended. I went through that with you; don’t want to do it again.”_ _

__Sam’s sense of outrage at this was so obvious that Dean smirked and ruffled his brother’s hair. “So, we’re thinking demons then?”_ _

__But if the missing kids had been possessed by demons and then come home, they were the best behaved demons the brothers had ever met. These kids were freaky good. After meeting the fifth, as he came off soccer practise with his mom, Dean rolled his eyes at Sam and murmured, “Stepford….” Cas glanced at him._ _

__“I do not understand that reference.”_ _

__Dean poked him in the ribs. “Less sword polishing, more watching TV, see?”_ _

__Castiel frowned and glanced toward the perfectly behaved, slightly robotic child, who was holding open the car door for his little sister. “You are saying he appears… unnatural, like a child on a television show?”_ _

__Dean gave him a look. “Huh, I wasn’t. Exactly. But now that you say….” He turned to watch the kid again. “What do you think, Sammy? Soap opera kids? Trickster thing again? This a TV show?”_ _

__“Probably not enough candy involved for the Trickster.”_ _

__“Or genital herpes.”_ _

__“Jesus, Cas, tell it like you mean, why don’t you!”_ _

__“I was only….”_ _

__“Yeah, well don’t. Come on. Let’s go. Sam, you got a location for the paper yet?”_ _

__Castiel appeared to be studying the retreating and, Dean had to admit, very shapely ass of the soccer mom. He frowned. “Like something you see there, Cas?”_ _

__Castiel frowned as well, turned to Dean, saw their mirrored expressions and huffed in annoyance. “No. Of course not. I was thinking.”_ _

__“That what we’re calling it now?”_ _

__Castiel turned and pointedly addressed his comments to Sam. “Did you notice that all the returned children were very… busy… when we arrived?”_ _

__Sam looked down, thinking. “I guess. I mean… yeah, ballet… soccer. The bikes. That’s normal though? For normal kids?”_ _

__They looked uneasily between each other, well aware that none of them was best placed to assess a childhood for being normal. Neither of the Winchesters had ever belonged to a club, or had a hobby – other than hunting and killing monsters, that is. And Castiel had never had a childhood. It made them smile suddenly, and that moment of rare camaraderie seemed to make Castiel willing to share his theory some more. “All of their… possessions… are new.” He nodded toward the boy in his pristine soccer uniform. “The bicycle was new. The ballet clothes…. Everything. As if the children had only recently begun these activities, or were being newly rewarded.” Dean and Sam stared at him. He frowned. “What?”_ _

__Dean suddenly clapped him on the shoulder and gave the lightest of ruffles to his hair. “Good one, Cas. Didn’t spot that. Sammy, what do you think?” Sam was distracted watching the tiny smile creep over the angel’s face, realising how long it had been since he’d seen Cas smile._ _

__“Yeah. I didn’t see it, but now…. Think we should go back? Speak with the families again?” Dean glanced at Cas, who was now staring at the horizon with his habitual look of distraction or boredom. “No, let’s stick with the plan.”_ _

__As usual, the local newspaper was located in the centre of the small town in a picturesque redbrick, colonial converted house. Dean was debating how best to split up. He couldn’t fault Cas for his FBI look – he always looked so freakin’ neat and clean nowadays – but he was liable to come out with shit – like his earlier comment on the Trickster – seemingly oblivious to the weirdness. “Okay, Sam, you go talk to the paper guys we’ll go speak with the sheriff.”_ _

__Sam glanced edgily between the other two for a moment. “You guys gonna be okay. I mean….”_ _

__Dean clapped Cas on the shoulder. “Sure we will. Right, Cas?”_ _

__Castiel narrowed his eyes but nodded. “We will be fine, Sam. I am confident Dean knows what he is doing.” There wasn’t much that could be added to that deadpan comment. Dean decided to take it at face value, grinned, and began to stride away. Castiel flicked a small glance to Sam, whether for support or at some private amusement Sam couldn’t honestly say. An afternoon talking with newsguys about missing kids-possibly-demons suddenly seemed like a good idea._ _

__Cas caught up to Dean outside a diner where Dean was reading the menu in the window. “Best burgers in the state. Original, huh? Good place for lunch later. You hungry?”_ _

__Castiel glanced at him as if trying to work out if this was a test or a wind up. “Possibly.”_ _

__“You gotta know.”_ _

“No, I don’t _got to know _, Dean. I am not sure. I think you forget that this is not my body. If you were inside me you would find all the sensations strange as well."__

____Dean tore his eyes from the menu and swung abruptly away. “Jesus, Cas.”_ _ _ _

____“Don’t blaspheme.”_ _ _ _

____“Oh, right, like your language ain’t being salted with nice juicy expressions these days.”_ _ _ _

____“Do you ever say anything that makes any sense, Dean? I speak every language of the human race, but I find you almost permanently incomprehensible.”_ _ _ _

____Dean flicked his gaze over to the stony expression of the man striding alongside him. “Funny that, Cas, cus lately I’ve been getting the impression that you’re tuning into me just fine and dandy.” Before Cas could reply Dean grinned and added. “Buckle up, Sheriff’s department.” Dean began his routine of patting Castiel down, adjusting him and straightening things that, in truth, didn’t need straightening. But he noted with some amusement that Cas didn’t object. It was a moment of familiarity they both seemed to enjoy. Head tilted to one side, listening distractedly to Dean’s instructions, Castiel murmured, “Of course, Dean,” then tentatively lifted his hands and began to straighten Dean’s tie. He gave him a small look, huffed slightly at the expression on Dean’s face then patted his shoulder. “I think you will pass, too. Shall we go?” Dean nodded to himself, mumbled, “Wiseass,” under his breath, and they pushed simultaneously at the glass doors fronting the small sheriff’s station of Fort Elizabeth. It was pretty much agreed by this stage that Dean did all the talking and Cas kept his cakehole shut. The angel did most of the staring though, and Dean now had to admit that he might just have been seeing more than Dean had given him credit for. Although he was loath to admit it, they made a good team._ _ _ _

____Dean had rarely been welcomed with open arms by local law enforcement, which was always a bit of a pisser when he was there to save lives, but he’d never met with such open hostility and general obstruction as he was by the sheriff’s department of Fort Elizabeth. The sheriff, a military looking man now carrying too much weight around the gut, which he seemed to be trying to redistribute by a constant adjusting of his gun belt, met them in the lobby. Summoned by the deputy he was abrupt and dismissive, claimed that the kids had come home, no harm done, and nothing for the feds to follow up on. He made a point of demanding that the two agents didn’t bother the remaining families and that this was now a dead story. Nothing more to see. Move on folks. Dean wasn’t that easily put off. “The youngest kid was six, Sheriff. Kinda young to go missing for two days, turn back up and have no one even wonder where he’d gone?”_ _ _ _

____The man gritted his teeth. “We wondered. We prayed. We found ‘em. This is a safe community. Nice place to live. We don’t want bad publicity.”_ _ _ _

____Castiel turned his gaze from some posters on the wall. “I do not understand your definition of bad publicity.”_ _ _ _

____Dean moved closer to Cas so their arms were touching and nudged him discretely, coughing into his hand to cover up a murmured, “Cakehole?” but smiled at the sheriff and explained, “I think what my partner means is that fifteen children returned home safely hardly seems like bad publicity.”_ _ _ _

____Now scratching idly at some undefined itch, the sheriff shifted his gaze from Cas back to Dean. “I reckon it’s whatever we say it is. Now, you got someplace other to be, Agent?”_ _ _ _

____Castiel suddenly spun on his heel and left. Dean could think of no reason to stay either, so with a weak smile at the sheriff and a flick of his eyes to the retreating angel he said, “We’ll be back when we’ve… err… got more questions.”_ _ _ _

____“Don’t think you will, son.” Dean decided that discretion was the better part of not looking like a total fuckwit and followed Castiel to the sidewalk._ _ _ _

____“Son of a bitching, bitch. We just got totally railroaded. And what part of cakehole and keeping it shut are you not understanding, Cas?”_ _ _ _

____“Stop talking, Dean. Call Sam. I may have an idea. I need to discuss it with him.”_ _ _ _

Dean did a theatrical turn around. “Huh, nah, I’m still here.” He glared at the angel. “Talk to _me _.”__

______Cas began walking away. “You will ridicule my ideas, we will argue and fight and then nothing more productive will be achieved this day.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Hey, wait, up.” He jogged and caught up. They walked along in silence for a while until Dean nudged his arm and grinned. “I’ll buy you lunch. Ridicule-free burger.”_ _ _ _ _ _

Cas muttered something under his breath but allowed himself to be led back to the diner with the _best burgers in the state _.__

________This time Dean bought two of everything and pushed half the food to Castiel’s side of the table, as if this was entirely natural and they’d been eating together for years. Castiel frowned at the burger, fries, soda and pie but after a glance at Dean to see if any ridicule was about to be added to the feast, he began to eat._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________When he could come up for air, Dean leant back in his seat and watched Castiel for a while. Castiel clearly knew he was being studied but continued to eat. At last Dean said quietly, “So, what’s the story here.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Castiel sighed and spread his hands on the table as if bracing himself, anchoring against a predicted storm. “The sheriff said they prayed and they came back. What date did the first child disappear?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Dean leaned forward. “About six weeks ago. Maybe beginning of June.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Castiel nodded, stared at his fingers intensely for a moment then lifted his eyes. “Six weeks ago I was still an angel.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Dean wasn’t sure how to react. It suddenly seemed as if the impersonal had become intensely personal. On top of watching Cas eat a proper meal for the first time, the conversation was going places Dean really didn’t want to go. “Okay.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Cas nodded, satisfied with Dean’s response so far. “I heard the prayers. As I told you. From strangers. Self-serving and annoying. Some from very distant places. Other countries even.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“Okay….”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

“But there were no prayers from here, Dean. I have heard many voices now – the families, neighbours, the sheriff. It is the _first _time I have heard these voices. That seems strange to me. Why did this town not pray for its children?”__

__________He finally looked away from his hands and up to Dean. Dean raised his eyebrows. “Now, that is a very good question.” For a long moment they stared at each other. It was so familiar Dean suddenly realised how much he had missed this strange quirk of their relationship. It seemed a very long time since they had looked at each other with anything other than angry or combative glares. Dean suddenly leant forward, not losing the connection of their eyes. “When this case is done, Cas, and we get home, we’re gonna talk, yes?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________Castiel bit his lower lip then licked over the bite. It was a heartbreakingly human gesture. He nodded once. “Yes. When we get… home.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________“Hey, thanks for letting me know we’re eating, guys.” Dean shifted over as Sam slid into the booth next to him, reluctantly pulling his gaze from Castiel’s._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________“How did you find us?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________Sam looked around theatrically then down at Dean’s burger. “Yeah. That was hard. So, what you got?” Dean caught him up quickly. Sam glanced at Cas, clearly impressed. “Okaaay. That kinda fits. Weirdly.” Running his fingers through his hair he pulled out his file of notes. “I’ve got nothing on these kids other than they went. No mentions in sports columns. No school reports. Nada. This is a local paper, guys. Every story is about what the townsfolk are doing. Not these fifteen though. But, look at this… and this.” He passed around various copies of news articles._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________Dean grimaced. “Great. Cattle mutilation… animal abuse cases on the rise… missing pets…. Why am I never surprised?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________Castiel was studying a picture of a missing dog. “You think this is all related? How? Why?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________Sammy sighed and began to gather the clippings back. “It always is, Cas. You got weird, you got animals getting sliced and diced, and it’s always related.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________He paused as the waitress came to take his order. She looked bored, which was not unusual, even in a diner that sold the best burgers in the state. She perked up a bit when Sam placed his healthy order, clearly finding a kindred spirit. She leaned over to clear a place for him and caught a glimpse of his file. Sam closed the cover discretely over the picture of one of the girls in the case. The woman’s face returned to its sour expression, and as she moved away they all caught a hissed, “Bitch.” Castiel pulled the file over to his side of the table and examined the picture. “This is Jordyn Cassidy. I believe the last time we saw her she was running a dolls’ tea party for her three younger sisters.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________“So, kids no one in the town wanted home. No damn prayers. Kids that provoke a bitchface from a waitress and lots of fucked up animals. But kids now living on Waltons’ Mountain. It’s an expression, Cas. What next, Sammy?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________Castiel handed the file back. “I do not understand why we should do anything. What is wrong here?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________“You’ve gotta be kidding, right? These kids aren’t normal. They aren’t for real. This is not normal.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________“They appear happy. Everyone appears happy.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

“And since when is happy good?” Even Dean seemed a bit surprised by that comment, and it was his. He regrouped, running an exasperated hand through his hair. “Look, it’s not our role to judge the effect, just the cause. I say not normal and not normal ain’t good. We’re Team Free Will, remember? I’m not seeing free will in this freaky situation, and that ain’t good.” If either brother heard a quiet _perhaps free will is overrated _from the ex-angel in the corner, they ignored it. “Sam, contact Bobby and give him what we’ve got. See if he can find other occurrences of freaky kids unfreaking. Hard to believe this is a oner. Cas an’ me’ll go visit some more families. Ask about the animals.”__

____________Dean and Cas stood to leave and Sam nodded, resignedly. “Yeah, don’t wait for me to eat, guys.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________Castiel frowned. “We are not.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________Dean grabbed his arm and grinned at Sammy as he pushed past his long legs. “Don’t want to cramp your style, baby brother. Reckon you and your tofu salad extravaganza gonna get lucky.” Dean had not missed the look the waitress had given his brother. “Maybe pump her about the bitch thing?” Sam nodded and watched them leave. He glanced down at the various empty plates on the table. Something had changed between his brother and the angel. Dean seemed… happier. But then as his brother had just pointed out, when was happy ever good?_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


	5. Chapter 5

Everything they heard that afternoon confirmed Dean’s growing suspicion that these kids had not been running for most-likely-to-be-missed in their yearbooks. 

They returned to the motel room at the end of the day despondent despite making such easy progress. No one wanted to address Castiel’s earlier assertion that nothing actually needed to be done. They had seen nothing but happy children, happy parents, happy neighbours. It was all freaking happy. 

Dean threw himself onto one of the two beds and turned on the TV. He clearly wasn’t really watching, but it created the bubble of space he needed around himself to unwind and think, and Sammy was very used to this routine. He sat at the table and opened his laptop and placed his phone alongside it, waiting for Bobby’s call. Cas seemed at a loss for a moment then he lifted his bag onto the end of the other bed and began to take out clean clothes. He took them with him to the tiny bathroom, and they heard the sound of the shower running. It was strange. It enhanced the fact that now there were three of them. After a while, Dean glanced at Sam to find his little brother steadily watching him. “What?”

“Nothing. You seem to be getting along with Cas better.”

“We’re not girls, Samantha. Let me watch my show.”

“You gonna join us tonight?”

Dean turned the TV off. “What tonight?”

“A bar, remember? I said….” He stopped as the door to the bathroom opened and Castiel emerged, freshly showered, shaved and changed. 

“It is very uncomfortable when you always stop talking whenever I enter the room.” He crossed the short distance to his bag, pushed it to the floor and sat down on the end of the bed. “You are both staring at me.” They were. Gone was the neat slacks-and-button-down-shirt look he’d taken to since falling. He was now wearing a pair of faded, ripped-at-the-knees jeans and a plain black T-shirt. For the first time Castiel, angel of the lord, had bare arms. And knees. And feet. It wasn’t much to stare at, but it was enough. Enough to finally bring home to the brothers that this was no longer an angel. That he was a man, just like them. Cas ruffled his fingers through his wet hair, mussing it up and pulled on some sneakers. “So, Sam. Are we going?”

Dean sat up and contemplated the man on the other bed. He sighed. “Cas.”

Castiel pursed his lips and began to argue before he realised that Dean hadn’t actually said anything yet. He glared. “What?”

“This is good an’ all. I get that you’re… tryin’ real hard to do the human thing here. And, hey, look at you. All good. But… err, Sammy, help me out here.” He turned pleading eyes to his brother. “Little steps, maybe? I mean, Jesus, Cas, what if you do pull tonight? You ready for that? You gonna bring her, where? Back here? Don’t think so, buddy. First times can be real… messy. Okay, that was so wrong, I mean….”

“Stop talking, Dean. If you are so concerned about my welfare in this world of dangerous, predatory women, perhaps you should chaperone me.” 

“That means….”

“I know what it fricking means, Sammy. Okay. I will. Jesus. Freaky happy town, and now the angel thinks he’s gonna get happy. This is me, see, going to the shower, see?” He slammed the door. Sam winced slightly. He turned to see if Castiel was bothered by Dean’s behaviour to see a small smirk being quickly wiped of the angel’s face. Sam closed the lid of the laptop and held Castiel’s gaze. He couldn’t do it as well as his brother, but it was intimidating in its own way. “Don’t fuck with him, Cas.”

Castiel leant his arms on his thighs and began to pick at the loose threads around the hole in one of his knees. “I have no idea what you mean. I have no intention of… fucking with Dean.”

“Hey, look at me. He’s worried about you.”

“Today?”

“What do you mean? Today how?”

“I mean, today, Sam. Is he worried about me today? Or was he worried about me yesterday; or was he worried four weeks ago when I fell from heaven for him. When I lost everything. For him. Because, I’m sorry, I’m not sure when the worrying about me started exactly. Enlighten me.”

Sam got up and dragged his chair over to Cas, slamming it down right in his space, sitting astride it and leaning close. “Stop it. Stop the fricking martyr act, Cas. There’s just you and me here now. Your new plaything isn’t dancing around you for once. You listen to me - angel or ex-angel, I don’t give a shit, but you hurt Dean, you put even one little bruise on Dean and I will hurt you.”

Castiel narrowed his eyes, regarding the, admittedly, intimidating figure in front of him. Sam laughed. “Yeah, you might be able to take me down. You’ve got freaky skills, I get that. But you get this, Cas. It’s my family, my home, my hunting life I’ve allowed you to join. You said third wheel? You wanna really be third wheel? Cus, you know, who is Dean gonna listen to? Who is Dean gonna side with if I say… _he’s gotta go_. So I’m talking hurt where I think you’d hurt most. You willing to risk being on your own?” If he hadn’t been so tense and sick to the stomach Sam might have seen the moment that Dean appeared to enjoy so much, that moment when Castiel went to fly out of the room, out of the moment, out of the humiliation, out of the humans’ emotions that he couldn’t understand. Out of everything that confused and hurt him. Need flashed across his face for a moment, then a strange sort of stillness took its place. He blinked slowly.

“I….” He swallowed deeply. “I am finding this life harder than I anticipated.”

“Try again.”

“I’m… sorry if I offended Dean?”

“And?”

“And… I will not fuck Dean?”

Sam suddenly spluttered a laugh. “ _With_ , Cas. Fuck _with_ Dean. World of difference.”

“Then I will not fuck _with _him either.”__

Sam stood up and carefully returned his chair to its original place. He felt like shit, like he’d kicked a sick puppy. But when Dean came out of the bathroom, still muttering insanely to himself, Castiel glanced over and said quietly, “Perhaps you could teach me to play pool tonight, Dean. I believe we are low on funds.” Entirely missing most of the import of this small statement, Dean shrugged, surprised, but clearly pleased.

“Sure. Why not?” He returned to the bathroom with his toothbrush. 

Sam watched the door close and wondered what new monster he had birthed in Castiel this night as he saw the unfathomable expression now crossing the angel’s face. 

 

Whatever he had seen in Castiel’s expression appeared to dominate the angel’s thoughts all night. He drank beer and played game after game of pool with Dean, talking relatively as much or as little as he ever did, but he seemed more than normally preoccupied. Used to seeing him staring at the horizon, or at odd things no one else could see, Sam was worried that the dark blue gaze rarely left his brother. The analogy he’d flung at Castiel earlier, that Dean was somehow this creature’s toy, seemed more and more apparent. He was certainly Castiel’s obsession that night. Dean, of course, was oblivious, or if he wasn’t, he was revelling in the attention. Castiel wasn’t glaring at him, wasn’t pissing him off (wasn’t punching him and that was always of the good) he was just… observing. Minutely. Dean thrived on attention. He played up to it, Castiel suddenly his best buddy, recipient of all his dumb jokes and casual pop references that they both knew he wouldn’t understand or care about either. Sam wished he’d never brought up the third wheel analogy either. He knew who was third wheel this night. After a few hours, nerves strung out and still waiting on a call back from Bobby, Sam decided he’d had enough. He caught Dean’s eye and nodded to the door, pointing to himself and making their gesture for cab. Dean got the message and flipped him off affectionately. Castiel saw the gesture and turned, catching Sam’s eye. Sam very slowly pointed a finger at him. The threat was implicit, but there, nevertheless. Castiel nodded and returned to his study of Dean. 

If Dean revelled in attention, he particularly revelled in attention from beautiful people, and ignoring the little voice in his head that said dudes didn’t call other dudes beautiful unless they also listened to Cher and owned cats, he could not deny that Castiel, his newly fallen angel, was fricking beautiful tonight. He still carried himself with a kind of freaky angelic grace. He was all shadows and light, blue-black intent and hard angles. When he deemed the moment just right, just as Cas was bending to take his shot, Dean asked casually, “So, what did you and Samantha gossip about while I was in the bathroom?”

“What?”

Dean had to laugh. He didn’t often catch Cas out like that – startle him into an alarmed and obvious bluff. He rolled his eyes. “Come on, Dude, I’m adorable, not dumb. Something was going on, and I could’a cut the air with my toothbrush it was so damn thick.”

“I was… I have been confused over some things. I forgot something I should have remembered. Sam helped me to remember.”

“Huh. Cryptic much? So, no more confusion?”

Castiel turned his back to the room and perched on the edge of the table, watching Dean measuring up for his shot. “No. Now I believe I am confused in other ways.”

Dean huffed. “Well by the way those ladies are heading in our direction, I think you’re about to discover a whole new world of confusion, my friend.” He was right. They were interrupted by young blondes, sisters, bringing beer. Dean was in heaven. They wanted to play but didn’t know how. Apparently. Needed instruction. Apparently. They wanted to laugh a lot as well and bend over and share their assets. Riding high from something intangible that Castiel had been feeding him all night, Dean was sparking, gunning for something, like his Baby on a straight highway in the hot sun. Castiel was his perfect foil: reel ‘em in with his unearthly beauty but have nothing to back it up. Cas had the look, he had the attitude, but like a joke present at Christmas, unwrap the pretty package and there was an empty box inside. Which Dean knew was unfair to the guy – Cas wasn’t empty so much as over full. His frequent pauses in conversation weren’t because he had nothing to say, but too much, and he was seeking for the word he wanted to be precise and clear. As Cas himself had pointed out, Dean threw out words like confetti, and most of it fell to the ground unappreciated – a shower of pretty with no substance. Cas’s words were like bullets: one would suffice, and they were hard and hurt. Dean was pretty damn sure girls preferred confetti to bullets. But to give the guy his due, Cas was making some effort. He had stopped watching Dean and had switched his attention to the older sister. The prettier one, but Dean wasn’t comparing. She was asking Cas where they were from, what they did, the usual prelude to asking him something better. He was replying with extremely cautious and incredibly suspicious answers. Dean had to pity the guy. It wasn’t easy to explain you came from heaven and travelled with two hunters killing monsters without actually saying any of that. Cas managed to convey that he came from a long way away and did something vaguely religious. The girl seemed pleased enough. Vaguely religious was cool. It was a challenge, gave you something to work with. She smirked, twirling her long hair around a finger and glanced over to her sister who was encouraging Dean to help her line up a shot. She perched her cute backside on the table and took a sip of her beer, raising her eyes fetchingly to Castiel. “So, I guess you’d know the missionary position pretty well then.” 

Dean missed the shot. 

Castiel was watching the ball with a frown, thinking, then replied, “I do not believe missionaries have particular positions for copulation.” The girl’s eyes widened, and he unfortunately misread that as encouragement to continue. “I have observed many missionaries having intercourse, and they use the same positions as other men.” 

Dean pulled him away, “Your shot!” and took the girl under his arm, convincing her within a minute that she was the cutest thing ever, and wasn’t she clever to get his friend’s sense of humour. She frowned a little at this but was generally mollified and more beer was consumed. He cornered Cas and poked him in the chest discreetly. “What happened to too busy to watch humans, buddy?” 

Castiel watched Dean’s finger against his T-shirt for a moment then replied, “I thought I’d save the sword polishing observation until later tonight.” Dean thought about this for a moment then stepped closer. “Okay, that’s it. I’m cutting you off. Taking you home. Putting you to bed. I had to do it for Sammy when he was… startin’ out, and I reckon it’s the same thing here.”

Cas pursed his lips, toeing a beer stain on the old wooden floor. He raised his eyes to Dean. “I thought this is what you wanted, Dean. For me. To be… normal. This….” He indicated with a flick of his eyes the girls, the bar, perhaps the whole damn town and all the life that was beyond. “This is normal. Isn’t _this _what I should want?”__

Dean swallowed. “I don’t know.” He looked around for a moment breaking their intense, shared gaze, but had soon recaptured it. His essential belief in happiness was shaken: two beautiful girls (eager and available girls), beer, a night off. Why wasn’t he happy with this? Why wasn’t he happy with this for Castiel?

“I told that girl that I had come a long way and was travelling, Dean. But however far I go, I cannot seem to find what I am seeking. Perhaps this _is _it.”__

“What? A bar? A small town? A blonde with no panties on?” Dean was amused that Cas’s eyes flicked from his to the girl with a slight frown of confusion. They came back to him quickly enough. 

“Yes, if this is _normal _, human life.”__

“Don’t do the airquotes thing, Dude, we’ve talked about that.”

“If I did not fall for this, then what did I give up heaven for?” He glanced again at the girl, now gesturing impatiently to her sister. Their evening was being reassessed in the light of a sudden lack of focus on them. Castiel’s eyes widened and his breathing sped up. Dean frowned. “Hey… calm down, buddy.” Castiel swallowed deeply, then again. “Hey, you gonna puke or something?” Cas gripped Dean’s arm, staring at him even more intently; the immense strength in his pale, corded muscles biting into Dean’s flesh. “I once visited Mary at the well in Nazareth and carried water for her when she was heavy with child. With _The Child _. I walked with her, and we spoke of simple things, and she offered me a cup of the sweet, cold water that I carried for her. And now I am here in this place with these women, and I am supposed to find this a substitute for all that I have lost? A reward? I didn’t fall for this, Dean. I fell for….” He shook Dean’s arm desperately, unable to articulate all that was contained in that small silence.__

“There gonna be a problem here, friend?” Dean swore and turned to find that the pool table, and the women, had been commandeered by two guys with _locals _written on their foreheads (in capitals). They were clearly ready to fight but happy enough not to have to. He turned to Cas. “Wanna go?” Cas nodded.__

They walked away.

It was incredibly simple. Dean didn’t even feel the need to spray his undoubtedly superior testosterone over the two men or to raise his more resplendent hackles. He threw his arm around Cas’s shoulder, mock punched him in the ribs to cover his friend’s imminent meltdown, and marched them both to the door.

As soon as they were outside in the cool night air, Dean withdrew his arm, and they walked silently to the Impala. Dean jiggled with the keys in his pocket, leaning against the hood, scuffing the dirt. “Feeling better?”

Castiel was standing, as usual, staring up at the stars, breathing deeply. He nodded. 

“I’m thinking we should take this… gettin’ laid thing… a mite slower for you, buddy? Maybe start with a church social? Date a nice girl for a year or ten?”

Castiel flicked him a rueful smile and huffed in amusement. “Starting with someone wearing undergarments might be advisable.”

They drove back to the motel in companionable silence for a while, Castiel in the passenger seat, until Dean murmured, “So, Mary, huh? She hot?”

Castiel gave him a pained look and turned his head to the window, but they both knew he was only objecting to Dean’s crassness out of some sort of obligation. Dean could see the small smile crinkling the angel’s eyes in the reflection in the passenger window. He turned up the music and watched with an intensity that he didn’t understand as Castiel’s fingers tapped out the rhythm just above the rip on his faded denim jeans.


	6. Chapter 6

When they had booked the room, what seemed a great deal longer than fourteen hours previously, potential problems with the sleeping arrangements had flicked over Dean’s mind, but, busy planning the day ahead, he’d ignored them. Now they were more pressing. Two queen-sized beds, one currently occupied by his sleeping brother. He hated sleeping alongside Sam because it was weird and freaky, but weird and freaky it was going to have to be because sleeping alongside Castiel was not an option. Cas appeared to agree. Beyond weird. They removed their shoes and jeans discreetly and slid under the covers. More easily in Cas’s case as he had four feet to himself and Dean had a strip down one side that if he turned sideward on, and gripped tight to the sheet, he fit. If he turned right he could watch his brother drool. If he turned left he was watching Cas. Life sucked. He turned left. Castiel was lying still and calm on his back far over on one side of the bed. Acres of unused mattress. Life still sucked. “You gonna sleep?” he whispered across the gap. Sammy stirred at the light noise. Cas waited until snoring resumed and replied carefully, “Possibly.”

Dean chuckled and dutifully repeated, “You gotta know.” He realised his mistake as soon as the words left his mouth and his eyes flew open in the dark of the room. Cas seemed to hesitate with his reply then said in his low gravely voice, “I do _not_ know. This is not my body. If you were inside me you would find all the sensations strange as well.”

Silence fell between them like a taint in the air, something with expectancy and a hint of danger. It made something respond in the intensely masculine hunter, prickling his fight or flight responses. The adrenalin snatched sleep, and he was even more aware of the narrow strip of mattress and his brother’s heavy, hot body behind him. Suddenly, with a grumble of swearing, he grabbed his pillows and threw them down alongside Castiel – a solid wall, and obvious statement, between them - and moved beds. Castiel hardly responded, only lifted his arms and folded them under his head. Dean turned on his belly, his face towards the silent figure apparently studying the cracks in the ceiling. The lights of passing cars washed over Castiel’s face, and the whole moment took on a surreal sense for Dean. It was so familiar in so many ways – a motel bed, car headlights passing like a lighthouse beacon over another man’s face. It was comfort and home and safety, and yet something had changed. This man wasn’t his father, wasn’t his brother. He was, as Dean had so startlingly realised earlier, another man, a man in his own right. Alien and new and yet also… familiar. Also home. Also safety. Perhaps even comfort. But there was something else as well that Dean could not so readily identify. His hand twitched under the sheet, and he remembered Castiel’s hand in the diner, that desperate little movement toward the burger, a starving man being betrayed by his body. He felt as if was starving as well, only not for food. 

Castiel turned his head on his pillowed arms. “Stop thinking, Dean. It is very loud. Go to sleep. All will be well.” Dean’s eyes closed against his own volition, and as he tipped over into sleep he heard his mother’s sweet whisper _angels are watching over you,_.


	7. Chapter 7

If three men going to bed in a small motel room with two beds and one bathroom was awkward, getting up was more so. He and Sammy had gotten it into a pretty slick routine, but Cas’s presence threw it out of synch. Eventually Dean swore, dragged on the clothes he’d worn out the previous night and stomped out unshaven to fetch breakfast. Sammy hung on, desperate to pee and brush his teeth. Castiel eventually emerged from the shower, pristine as ever and back in his more sober shirt and tie ensemble. He raised an eyebrow at Sam’s tapping leg. “Apologies. There is still hot water.”

“Dude!”

Dean returned with cartons piled high as Sammy made a dash for the bathroom. “Thanks, Cas. Had to pee behind a tree! Gross!”

“Apologies. Again. You could have come in. I would not have minded.”

“Jesus. Is that an angel thing? Gross.”

“Do not blaspheme, and I was – as far as I can convey to you – a shaft of sunlight, so such things were irrelevant to me.”

“Okaaay, well I like to keep my shaft private. Eat up.”

A long night in a bar, a minor emotional crisis and too much beer didn’t seem to have affected Castiel in the least. He looked polished and intent, bright and sharp-edged. Dean studied him surreptitiously as he scoffed down his morning calories. Sammy, freshly showered, joined them, groaning at the grease in the food, and for a moment Dean had a sensation of happiness so profound he wondered if the town’s malaise was affecting him. He grinned at the other two, mouth full of sausage and hash browns. “Eww. Gross, Dean.” Castiel only frowned but then he raised his hand and gently tapped Dean’s jaw closed. Sammy began to laugh and lost some food from his mouth. Dean swallowed so awkwardly he began to mock choke. Castiel looked between them and said gravely. “And I gave up heaven for this.” But both brothers heard the undercurrent in his voice that confirmed that, at this moment, he didn’t see he’d gotten the worst of that trade.

After a while Dean sobered and reluctantly pushed the food away. “Okay, guys, enough putting it off. What are we going to do?” Because they all knew that’s exactly what they’d been doing – putting off deciding how to end happy, how to break hearts already wounded and aching. Castiel took an uncharacteristically deep breath and said, “I was thinking last night while you were both sleeping that you are right, Dean. I was wrong.” He glanced at Sam then clarified, “Free will is all that is important. If these families are happy on a false premise then that is wrong. Free will is not easy, but it is necessary. Then when we have found a reason to be happy it is real.”

Both brothers stared at him. Sam chuckled. “You don’t say much, Cas, but when you do it’s good. Gotta give you that.” Castiel bowed his head then lifted it and held Sam’s gaze. 

“What you say Sam is always worth hearing. And I thank you for that.” Sam gave him a private, pleased smile.

Well aware he was being left out of something interesting and important, Dean coughed to bring the attention of his wingmen back to where it should be. “So we find the bitch or bitch-dude doing this and gank ‘em? Agreed? Bobby get back to you yet?” Sam shook his head, grabbed his phone and went out to check messages. Dean looked over at the other man. 

“You locked and loaded? It’s an expression.”

Castiel took a long, last look at the room as he packed a few items into his bag, his eyes resting on the two distinct indentations in one of the beds. Change in his new life was unavoidable, inevitable, but for a creature that had been unchanging since time began, it was happening a little too fast for his liking. He had entered this room yesterday morning angry, bewildered and focused on one very distinct green-eyed cause of all his woes. Leaving today that focus had not shifted, but the cause of it was far more complex and overwhelmingly confusing. 

Dean grabbed his bag from him, clapping him on the shoulder as he passed. “Let’s go ruin someone’s day.” Castiel nodded. It seemed only fair.

Sam held up his finger to make Dean pause as they approached the car. He was listening to something on the phone, and as they drove away he filled them in on Bobby’s assessment of the case. It wasn’t new, as Dean had suspected. What did worry them was Bobby’s more careful plotting of the timeline for the abductions with the animal mutations and disappearances. As with the other case, which had occurred some years before in a small, remote town in Canada, the mutilations had occurred while the children were missing, not before. The children had not harmed the animals in their previous lives as “troubled kids”. Whatever had tapped into a town’s desire to have bad kids made good had apparently demanded blood sacrifice. Blood of true innocents. “Why is it always blood, huh? Why can’t it be something good? Like chocolate.”

Cas turned his eyes from the passing scenery to reply to Dean’s exasperated question. “Blood is the most important substance in my Father’s creation.”

“Yeah, that from the angel who’s yet to taste chocolate. Okay, so blood it is. Bobby got any ideas how we find this demon-bitch-whatever? How we kill it?”

“He’s waiting to hear back from some guys in Canada. Said he’d call.”

“Great, so what do we do now?”

Castiel leant forward once more. “Perhaps we should concentrate on the first child. Perhaps this was intended to be something for that child only but….”

“Other parents saw the new and improved and wanted their slice of that yummy pie…?”

“That is not exactly what I was going to say, but the import is correct.”

“So, that’s a yes.”

Castiel narrowed his eyes. “Yes, Dean, that’s a yes.”

Sammy huffed. “Okay, first child. James Rold aged twelve. Mother a … stay at home… stepfather a… lawyer.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Went missing for two days – pretty standard – had slightly more early publicity on his return but that stopped more or less within a day…” He held the file loosely in his hands, thinking. “They’ve just bought a new house, Dean. Big house.”

“You thinking pay off?”

“Yep. I’m thinking pay off. Dad gets his stepson sorted out. Likes the result, sees the potential for a lucrative new set of clients and uses his firm to broker the deals.”

“Then I’m thinking not demon but witch. Money as motivation says human to me.” Dean swung the mirror so he could see Castiel in the back seat. “Angels ever motivated by money, Cas?”

Cas smiled faintly. “Paul said that the love of money is the root of all evil. So no.” After a pause he added, “But Paul was, I think you would say, a total douchebag.”

Dean snickered. “So, we’re visiting the firm?” Sam nodded and folded away his file. 

“106 Mainstreet. Can’t miss it.”

That James Rold’s stepfather looked uncannily like the meatsuit Zachariah had chosen to walk around in didn’t surprise Dean one bit. He was desperately trying not to think of all the lawyer jokes he knew, which was hard, because he knew plenty. They sat in the man’s office, glass, steel and prosperity oozing from the walls, and listened to his story, all very moving and well told, about his stepson’s absence and return. It was heart warming. Sam had remained in the car, waiting for Bobby’s call. Once again, Dean and Castiel had assumed their law enforcement identities. Silent, as agreed, Cas was wandering around the room, looking at things. Dean was managing to watch him at the same time as listen to the oily words of the concerned parent. It was frustrating, but Dean could not find any flaw in the truth of the man’s words although he knew he was lying. He just knew. It was in the eyes, or the way he held his hands in an unctuous position of prayer. Dean decided it was time for them to leave. He wanted to do bad things with this man, and not in the good way of that. He expressed their thanks for his co-operation and other meaningless crap and practically dragged Castiel out of the offices. “Waste of fricking time. Let’s hope Sammy’s got something better.”

Cas looked at him in something that, for Castiel, approached astonishment. 

“What?”

“He was Canadian, Dean.”

“Huh? What? Was he? Huh. Yeah. You sure?”

Castiel raised his eyebrows. “Yes, I’m sure. I speak all human languages and hear all accents. He was from Saskatchewan. The first case Bobby told Sam about….”

“Was in Saskatchewan. Jesus, Cas. You should become a hunter. You’re good at this.”

Cas laughed softly with genuine amusement. “Don’t blaspheme.”

“So step-dad does his evil mojo in Sasquatch….” He pulled out his phone and called Sam. “Find out about John Rold’s first family, Sam. Saskatchewan.”

“Canada? You think…?”

“Exactly.” He grinned and slapped Castiel’s chest. “You hungry?”

“We ate breakfast less than an hour ago.”

“So that’s a yes?”

Castiel smiled. “Yes, Dean. That’s a yes.”

As they headed back to the car, Castiel frowned and glanced back at the diner. “Are we not going to eat?” 

“Tell me, buddy, who most says home baked cookies to you?”

“A person saying home….”

“Okay, stay-at-home-mom, that’s who.”

“Ah. James Rold’s wife. She is going to bake us cookies?”

Dean grinned. “Could you resist this face?” Fortunately for Castiel they reached the car and he was saved from replying.

When they reached the house, the boy, James, was out front, apparently teaching his small sister to ride her bike. It was a picture of sibling contentment and loyalty. Dean huffed. “Definitely demonic.” 

Castiel looked between the brothers. “Did you not teach Sam this activity?”

Both brothers seemed to find this inappropriately funny. 

The mother, to Dean’s amusement, was baking cookies. If she was surprised to see the three FBI officers her friends had told her about, she hid it well and invited them into the spacious kitchen. Sam wandered over to the large glass doors that led out to the yard, a spacious and well-stocked yard with the requisite trampoline and swing set. Dean perched on a stool at the counter where Joelle Rold was rolling and chopping and otherwise staying occupied and not looking at the three men. Castiel, hovering behind Dean’s shoulder, appeared fascinated by the activity, but as he’d been told, once again, not to speak, he did not comment on anything he saw. Dean was about to start asking his questions when a phone rang. Wiping her hands she smiled an apology and took the call. Although she turned her back on the men, Dean could tell by the shift in her shoulders that the call was probably about them. He glanced at Castiel and raised his eyebrow questioningly, holding up some of the raw dough, waving it temptingly. Castiel frowned so Dean tossed it into his own mouth. Joelle nodded a couple of times then turned back with a bright smile. “So, what can I help you guys with?” 

Dean swallowed with difficulty and was about to ask his first question when the woman picked up the knife she had been using to chop nuts and thrust it at Dean’s left eye. It would have connected, but a hand was suddenly there, holding the blade. It happened so quickly all Dean saw was movement and then blood. Lots of blood. He tipped back off the stool in reaction to the attack. Sam was shouting and Castiel…. Castiel was bleeding. He had seized the blade and was gripping it while the woman pushed and twisted. Recovered, Dean leapt the counter and tackled her to the ground. He heard more shouting and someone jumped him, pinning the woman even more firmly to the ground, and the next thing he felt was something hard and painful smashing into the back of his head.


	8. Chapter 8

Consciousness returned gradually and painfully. Dean was aware of his arms being tied too tightly behind his back before the pain splitting across his skull, but once he was aware of that, it was all he could focus on. “Sammy?”

“I’m okay, Dean. I’m here.”

“Cas?”

“I am here too.”

“What the fuck happened?” Dean struggled to sit up. They were lying in a basement, not particularly the basement of supernatural horror, but a fairly normal middle-America basement with a furnace clicking on and off, a few laundry machines, and tools hung neatly on hooks. Sam was tied by the wall across from Dean, and Castiel was… Castiel was lying in what appeared to be a pool of blood a few feet from Dean. “What the fuck! Why are you… are you bleeding?” The memory of the attack returned, the knife coming toward his face, the vision of blood spurting out onto the cookie dough and Castiel struggling to hold the blade as it twisted in his fingers. “Are you okay? Talk to me, buddy.”

“I am fine, Dean. We have more pressing concerns. You were hit by the sheriff, and Sam was brought down by two deputies. “

“Figures. So, what do they want?”

Castiel looked down pointedly to the pool of blood seeping from behind his back. “I believe this might be our best clue.”

“Funny. Damn it to hell. Are we seriously back to blood sacrifice? Sammy, you got anything useful here?”

Sam pulled a free hand from behind his back along with a pair of yard clippers he’d been working on his bonds with. “This work for you?”

Dean grinned. “Sure does.” Sam crawled over to free Dean and then went to Castiel. He reared back and sucked in his breath. “Cas!”

“I am fine, Sam. Cut me loose.”

“What?” Dean scrambled over and saw Cas’s hand. His three middle fingers were… dangling, and Dean swore he could see bone ends across the savage cut through the blood. “Fuck! Sam!” Sam was already holding Cas’s hand high and wrapping it with a clean shirt he’d found in the laundry basket. The shirt was quickly soaked through, and Sam held the hand higher, keeping pressure on. He glanced worriedly at Dean and mouthed _hospital_. Dean felt a shiver down his spine. It had to be bad if Sam was thinking that. They helped Castiel to his feet. He was pale and sweating but appeared otherwise as normal. He glanced at Dean to find Dean studying him closely. “That must hurt like a bitch. You got any mojo left at all? Little squirt of angel juice maybe?” 

Castiel licked his lips and shook his head. “But I will try, Dean. Miracles do happen.”

“Get him some water, Dean.” 

Castiel drank deeply from a jar of water that Dean drew for him. He nodded his thanks. 

“Oh, you have got to be kidding.” Sam turned to see what Dean had spotted and grinned. 

“Is that what I think it is?”

“If you’re thinking it looks like a gun safe, then I’d say you’d be right.” He pursed his lips like a kid choosing candy, plucked an axe off the wall and took it over to the thin metal cabinet. Two hits and it was open. And full of guns. And ammunition. Other than his badly wounded friend, his own headache, and the fact they were about to be sacrifices for freaky-parenting-dot-com, they were in good shape. He took a gun and threw another at Sam who caught it one-handed, his other hand still elevating Cas’s wound. Castiel pulled away gently. “I am okay, Sam. Help Dean.” He pulled his hand back to his chest then glanced down at it. Dean assumed he was thinking good angel thoughts and nodded at Sam and began to climb the stairs. Before Dean reached the door he paused and looked back at the other two. He glanced around the basement and down at the guns in their hands. “Either of you think this is too… easy?” Sam frowned. Castiel didn’t reply, he had his head down and was gripping onto the rail as if to stay vertical. 

Sam hefted the gun. “Easy or not, it’s all we’ve got, and Cas has to get help, Dean.” He added a mouthed now with wide eyes and Dean got the message. One kick and the door splintered, allowing him to shoulder through. It didn’t help his head any. 

The house was empty. They had the distinct feeling the family would not be returning. 

Making their way to the car, Dean heard a groan, turned, and caught Castiel’s free arm just in time to prevent him falling. “Sam!” Sam carefully took the angel’s other arm, and they half-lifted, half-dragged him to the car. For the first time he made a sound of pain, a gasped, raw sucking in of breath through his teeth, but he slid onto the backseat of his own accord and nodded his thanks at them. Dean and Sam jumped into the front, and Dean pulled away from the house. “No way we got away that easy, Sam. Never happens.”

“I know.” He was fumbling with his phone and connected to Bobby, his eyes glancing nervously to the backseat. He began to update Bobby in a coded Winchester way that spoke volumes to Dean – bad injury, beyond self-help, run interference at hospital – but hopefully was lost on the victim himself. Cas didn’t seem aware of anything but his hand, which he was watching with morbid fascination. “Hey, buddy, hang in there. You’ll be fine. Nothing but a scratch.”

Castiel lifted his head, and Dean swore silently at the almost green tinge to his skin and the slow, hypnotic blink. “This is not pleasant.” 

“That’ll teach you to take on the cookie monster. Dick.”

Castiel smiled wanly, which was what Dean was going for. Sam began to relay directions to the hospital, and between driving and watching Castiel in the mirror and trying not to think about his head, Dean was fully occupied until he pulled the Impala up before the doors of the small town medical facility. He hopped out and began to ease Castiel from the backseat. “If there’s blood on the leather, dude, you’re grounded for the next three days.” As the angel could barely stand unaided, Sam was fairly sure he’d be grounded for a while longer than that. 

They handed their wounded colleague to the emergency staff and flopped gratefully into chairs in the waiting room. Sam pulled out his phone and gave Bobby a more accurate account of the proceedings. Hearing him say the words _lose_ and _fingers_ and _ruptured_ and _amputation_ Dean looked wildly around, spotted the bathroom and staggered in, voiding everything he’d eaten since that morning. He knew he probably had concussion, but it felt familiar so he didn’t sweat it. 

The next time they saw Castiel he was sitting on the edge of a bed, his hand bandaged beyond recognition, his blood-soaked sleeve cut away. Dean left Sam to listen to the doctor’s explanation of flexor tendon repairs and elevation and infection risk and walked slowly to the injured man. Castiel lifted his head and smiled shyly. Dean came closer. It seemed natural for Castiel to make space for him to come closer still, so he shifted one leg fractionally and Dean stood between his thighs. Too close really for one colleague visiting another, but they had never allowed rules on personal space to affect their behaviour when it suited them. Dean gently took hold of Cas’s mummified hand and turned it around, inspecting the wrapping. He shook his head sadly, “Just as well you’ve not started jerking off yet, Dude. Serious cockblocker here.” Castiel coughed a surprised laugh then winced, and Dean grinned. “Yeah, it’ll hurt like a bitch. Don’t laugh, don’t sneeze.”

They stared at each other for a long minute. Dean didn’t say thank you because Cas didn’t need to hear it. They both knew it was said and understood in that long look. Eventually Cas asked, “What is happening with the case? Have I missed developments?”

Dean smirked. “Yeah, you could say that. Developments. They’re all gone.”

“Gone?”

“Lock, stock and barrel. It’s an expression. Empty houses, missing kids and parents this time. Huh, and this is gonna be a law enforcement-free town for a while, I’m thinking.”

“Where have they gone? Why?”

“I’m guessing they didn’t want happy ruined.” 

“Are we going to find them?”

Dean found a small flaw in the wrapping he was still investigating and began to rearrange it. “I don’t know. What do you think?” He glanced back up. 

“Please stop squeezing my hand, Dean, I have had fifty stitches, apparently.”

“Baby. So?”

Castiel thought about the boy he had seen, teaching his sister to ride her bike in the warm sunshine of a peaceful family day. He thought about Dean and the moment that he had seen, in his mind’s eye, the knife plunging in to turn green to blood-red mush. He thought about his hand for a moment and the throbbing pain he was enduring, which he had never felt before. He thought about two indentations in a mattress and the long night he had spent lying alongside the man he had fallen from heaven for. “I think I would like to go home.”


	9. Chapter 9

There was a sly and annoying slice of guilt returning with them in the Impala as they drove toward home. It occupied the seat next to Castiel when he was at his worst. Sometimes it climbed into Dean’s lap, making his driving erratic. Once or twice it groped Sam while he slept, causing him to jerk awake with his heart racing. They had not done a good job, and there was very little sense of satisfaction. Dean knew that sometime, somewhere down the road, another hunter would be alerted to a case of missing children that seemed… off. Sam tried not to think about the blood sacrifice. Castiel could not rid his mind of the face of a dog he had seen on a missing poster. But he blamed some of his sadness on the freaky number of pills he’d been forced to consume since his injury and the constant almost debilitating pain he felt regardless of where he put his injured hand. Up, down, flat, propped on something, it didn’t seem to help. It throbbed and it just hurt. It did nothing to improve his mood that he seemed to have developed the need for sleep at the same time as experiencing his first major injury. Eating (and associated human activities), needing water, sleeping, in pain, he was beginning to forget the attractions of being human. But somehow, despite being in a worse physical condition than when he had left Bobby’s, he could not summon the anger towards Dean that had driven every moment of the first four weeks of his downfall. It had just gone. Sure, Dean annoyed him, pissed him off, wound him up, drove him to sometimes want to stuff a rag in his mouth and sit on him just to shut him up, but anger and resentment had just gone. He couldn’t explain it, and he thought about it a lot on the long drive. He had nothing much else to do as every simple thing was difficult, and as he would not accept help, he did very little. Thinking was something he could still do whilst appearing to stare out at the horizon. He had always thought a great deal and being an ex-angel had not altered that. Without the anger towards Dean that had so consumed him, what was left? It was a puzzle. Nature abhors a vacuum; therefore Castiel knew that some other feelings must have taken the place of the almost murderous rage he had lost. The constant irritation he felt toward Dean could not be sufficient to fill such a gaping void. He glanced toward the object of his thoughts to find, as usual, that Dean had twisted the mirror and was watching him. “What?”

Dean shrugged. “Nothing. How you doing?”

“I would be doing better if you would keep your eyes on the road. One injury is sufficient.”

“Baby. It was a scratch. You hungry?”

Castiel shook his head. Eating made him feel sick, which according to Sam was typical on the antibiotics he’d been given. 

“You want to sleep? Lie down maybe?”

Castiel did, but he didn’t want to appear weak. And the thought of being asleep in a car terrified him for some reason. Unused to sleeping as he was, he preferred to be in the same place when he woke up as when he allowed himself to lose consciousness. The whole business was awful and, besides, lying down only made his hand throb more. He frowned at a strange sensation in his vessel. He glanced at Dean and had the overwhelming urge to turn his face away and glare at the passing scenery. Glaring helped keep the odd sensation at bay for a moment, but then he found himself swallowing hard, repeatedly. He bit his lip, but a sudden, overwhelming feeling rushed up from his belly into his throat and eyes, and to his utter and complete humiliation he made an odd noise, halfway between a hiccup and a cough, and he discovered he was crying. “Pull over!” If he’d commanded battalions in heaven with that amount of force they’d have probably won. Dean skidded the car over, cursing, thinking they’d hit something. Sam jerked awake, panicked, his books scattering into the well by his feet. Cas wrenched the door open with his good hand and stumbled out, trying to breathe without the hideous hitch in his breath. He wiped his face carelessly with his free hand and walked a little distance away. He heard footsteps behind him and groaned. “Please. Go away.”

Dean flung himself to the ground on a slight sandy rise in front of Castiel and looked up at him, screwing his eyes shut against the light. “It happens, Cas. We’ve all cried. Get used to it.”

“How can you stand it?” Cas wiped his face again but was relieved to see he had said that whole sentence without the awful accompanying sobbing noise. “Why? Why now? I mean, this has hurt more. It hurt the most when I was bleeding out in the basement. It hurt a great deal when they were stitching it. It hurts when I sleep. It hurts _all_ the time, so why did I…?” He didn’t even want to say the word but forced it out. “Cry! Why am I crying now, Dean? I don’t understand.”

Dean stood up and urged him closer with a small gesture of his hand. He very slowly and carefully lifted his sleeve and used the cuff to wipe Cas’s face. “Used to do this with Sammy. He hated it too. It’s always best if you spit on your sleeve first so you can squish it all in. Hey, I’m joking. Come here.” He just held his arm in a welcoming position, and after another hesitation, Castiel allowed himself to be pulled into a hug. While Dean had him secure, he murmured, “It’s shock, Cas. You’re still in shock. Don’t beat yourself up about it.” He eased Castiel away so he could catch his gaze. “You didn’t tell us anything about it. You wouldn’t talk about it. This is what happens when you bottle things up: they do a John Hurt when you least expect it, yeah?”

“I don’t understand….”

“Never mind.”

“You said only babies whine.”

“Yeah, well, I’m an idiot. Trust me, never listen to a word I say, okay?”

Castiel smiled, which a few minutes ago he had thought would never happen again. “I’m embarrassed.”

“Better than being an idiot, I guess. Another hug make you forget it?”

Castiel frowned. He was very sure that another hug from Dean wouldn’t do anything to stop the excruciating feeling of embarrassment he felt at a soldier of his age, an angel of the lord, a celestial being of light, crying over a throb in his hand. “Yes, I think it would.” 

Dean pulled him back close and squeezed him, patting his back. Castiel was not an easy person to hug as he found physical proximity with another person very difficult. Dean’s arms around him made him tense up, which he consciously tried to overcome by going limp, which made Dean grab at him a little more and hold him closer still. “Hey, buddy, just relax and go with it. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“Actually, Dean….” Castiel winced and moved his hand to one side. Dean immediately pulled away, realising he’d forgotten the whole reason for the hug in the first place. He mock punched Castiel’s good shoulder. 

“All better, buddy?”

More bemused than better, Castiel dutifully followed Dean back to the car. The rest of the journey didn’t seem so long now. He had even more to think about. He wanted to relive the crying, many times - he wanted to study in his mind how it had snuck up on him and taken him down so fast, so he could devise strategies against another such attack. He wanted to think about Dean’s reaction to his humiliating display. He wanted to think about the hugs. He tried to focus on the first one mostly, but like a snake in the grass, his traitorous mind kept returning to the second. He had been tense and stiff. He had been confused and embarrassed, but he had not been unaware that the hug had had a very noticeable effect on Dean. One he had not previously associated with a man hugging an injured colleague for moral support. This was the most intriguing of all the thoughts that occupied him for the rest of the journey, and he arrived at Bobby’s extremely surprised to find that he had not thought about the throbbing in his hand at all.


	10. Chapter 10

Bobby came out to the car when they arrived, shaking his head at the sorry trio. “Idjits,” was his only, and helpful, comment. He eyed the angel warily, having been briefed by Sam on his condition but on little else concerning him since they’d left. The atmosphere had been so tense for the last few weeks that he’d wondered if he’d actually see all three return together. He waited his opportunity to get Sam alone, as he was the only one with a brain, and asked him outright what the other two fools were about. Sam debated his options. He could say that Castiel had saved Dean’s life and all now seemed good between them, which would have been true. He could say he’d woken one morning to find Dean and the angel sleeping together, which would also be true. He could tell Bobby that he’d taken Castiel out to get laid and had left him so engrossed with his older brother that _he’d_ needed to get laid just to relieve the sexual tension of watching them. He debated mentioning the boner his brother had sported when he’d returned to the car from comforting Castiel, but Sam made it one of his rules never to think about Dean and erections in the same thought. But this didn’t stop it being true. Instead, he said casually, “Cas did good on the hunt. Dean was pleased.” 

Bobby nodded sagely and muttered, “Don’t tell me then. Idjit.”

Now that Castiel was sleeping, new arrangements had to be made in the house. He felt awkward; he felt as if he were imposing on the Winchesters, and often wished for the anonymity of the motel room. While decisions were still being made he approached Bobby one morning while the old hunter was brewing coffee. Without turning around Bobby asked, “How’s the mitt?”

Castiel only had one wound so he made a wild stab at the meaning of this and replied. “Fine, thank you.”

Bobby turned around and huffed. “You know you don’t have to learn everything from that idjit, ya know. When you’re asked how you are, you can damn well say how you are. Like normal people.”

“In that case I am in constant pain; I cannot even tie my own shoelaces let alone do things too embarrassing to mention, and I wish to fuck I had not held onto that knife quite as unnecessarily hard as I did.”

Bobby nodded. “Stick to the _I’m fine_. Suits you better.”

Castiel laughed, a sound that was so rare Bobby felt the need to sit down. “So, what did you seek me out at this Goddamned early time to swear at me for?” He waved his lordly permission for Castiel to sit as well.

“I do not know how you are going to solve the sleeping arrangements now that I require sleep. I want to suggest that I leave, that I perhaps stay somewhere in town, but I do not know how to approach this with Dean. And with Sam, of course.”

“Oh, of course. With Sam too.” Bobby scratched under his hat with amusement. “From what I have observed of Dean – oh, and Sam, of course, let’s not forget Sam in this fucked-up, co-dependent shit – I strongly suggest you keep your damn trap shut, angel, and sleep wherever we decide you’re gonna sleep. How’s that suit you?” 

It took a while for Castiel to process the odd reply, but when he thought he’d gotten the gist of it he smirked a little. “I think that suits me very well.”

“Fool. Pour me some coffee. You’ve still got one damn hand.”

 

Castiel occasionally wondered what life would have been like at Bobby’s on their return from this unsatisfactory case had he not been injured. His injury dominated everything now, even though he tried to make nothing of it, and the Winchesters seemed to ignore it. It was odd and he couldn’t work it out. Of course, he needed help to do almost everything. He was astonished to find just how used he had become to his vessel when he now had a vital part of it out of action. He couldn’t get dressed in his preferred clothes; he couldn’t shave and could barely manage to shower. He couldn’t cut up his food, and all of this would have been totally humiliating had the Winchesters not done everything for him without appearing to do anything. Or think anything of it. He eventually came to the conclusion that living with and working around injury was extremely normal for them, and that by treating him as they did themselves, they were saying something far more important about his place in Team Free Will than words ever could. Sam had sorted out his dressing problem after the first day by producing a pair of sweat pants that were too loose and a T-shirt with a cut off sleeve, both of which he could pull on without assistance. If they ate food which needed cutting, his miraculously appeared at the table pre-cut, slammed down and pushed over with as little ceremony as Bobby produced food for all of them. Dean took over the shaving problem for, as he said, he was the only one who’d _taught_ someone to shave, so he was best qualified to shave someone else. No one called him on his logic because the others were profoundly pleased by this decision for their own, very different reasons. Castiel had not even had to ask. He had merely been observing himself in the bathroom mirror that first day, razor in his left hand, wondering why an angel of the lord was not ambidextrous: they were not his hands, so should he not be able to control both equally? He had looked up to find Dean’s reflection in the mirror, watching him. “Take a seat, Q-tip.” And that had been that. 

But after that first casual start, these sessions became increasingly intense for Castiel. Dean rarely spoke. It was so quiet in the bathroom all Castiel could hear was the rasp, rasp of the razor against his skin. He would close his eyes, and in that startling, human privacy, he was free to think and to feel, because for the first time in his incredibly long existence, he had someone truly touching him. He’d had back slaps, chest poking, a couple of squeezed hugs and (unfortunately) various medical staff inflicting various degrees of pain, but this touch was new. This touch was very, very different. He could feel the inside of Dean’s thighs, for it was impossible to sit thus without letting his legs rest against them. He could feel the touch on his face: Dean’s hand planted, fingers spread across his skin, and then the hand moving slowly, stretching his features, stroking him; Castiel, eyes tightly shut and experiencing the sensations from the inside. For the first time he began to appreciate what humans enjoyed in touch, and wished he’d reciprocated more when touched in the past – responded to a hug perhaps, slapped Dean on the shoulder. Touched _Dean’s_ face. He had never realised how unpredictable touch could be and yet how exciting that very unpredictability could feel. Dean shifted his fingers seemingly at random, moved his hand… the touch would go, but… there… it was replaced somewhere else. He discovered his lips were particularly sensitive, something he had never noticed before, but when Dean touched them to shave his chin or under his nose they flared with sensation. The first time this had happened he had to lick them afterwards, and he’d heard a soft huff of amusement from Dean. Occasionally Dean would place his hand over one of Castiel’s eyes to tilt his head and hold it still and move in closer; sometimes he would thread his fingers into Castiel’s hair and hold the strands, locking his head in an awkward position, the razor still travelling the contours of his face. The sensations were overwhelming. Other than a ruffle once or twice, in an irritating big-brother sort of way, no one had ever touched his hair. It had never been pulled or held. He could feel; his hair could feel, and it astonished him. And then once or twice, with a sigh of exasperation, Dean, seemingly unable to find just the position he needed, would wrap his free arm around Castiel’s head and pull one side of his face to his chest. The first time this had happened, Castiel had stiffened, jerked out of his almost hypnotic concentration on the exquisite luxury of the touch. Dean had hesitated; Cas had forced himself to relax, and Dean’s arm had tightened once more, pressing Castiel’s cheek to his heart. It astounded him that humans could cope with so much sensation at one time. His vaunting boasts about knowing human behaviour through observation were just that: dust in the wind. You had to _feel_ this to understand it. Pressed to Dean’s chest, he had sensation pouring into him: warmth, the feel of the T-shirt against his skin and, best of all, the smell of Dean. He had worn Dean’s T-shirts when he’d first fallen; he’d slept in a bed with him; he’d been inseparable for weeks, but _nothing_ had prepared him for these moments of smelling Dean’s body up close and personal as the muscles moved and worked around his head. He didn’t even know what half the smells were; he never had time to take it all in before, with a shake, and a towel thrown in his face, Dean declared they were done for another day. As he sat on the edge of the bathtub, reeling, overwhelmed, listening to Dean’s jogged footsteps down the stairs, Castiel had a profound sympathy for infants emerging from the sensory deprivation of the womb to their epiphany of noise and light. He wanted to scream too and relieve the almost unbearable tension in his body.

And perhaps it was coincidence, perhaps just bad timing, but these first days of being helped to live appeared to have made his body come to life in other ways. For the first time one morning, on waking, he had an erection. 

They had solved the sleeping arrangements in typical Winchester fashion by not really solving them at all but merely moving two old army cots, one into the room where Sam slept and one in with Dean. All three of them then seemed to move between them in a pattern Castiel could not work out. Sometimes he slept in Dean’s room, but sometimes when he got there, he found Dean had moved in with Sam for the night, and he could hear their animated voices as they argued or rehashed things from the day, or sometimes just their quiet voices as they chatted about nothing and everything. He then had Dean’s room to himself, and presumably the bed, had he taken it, but he never did, preferring the cot and the shadowed corner where he could think his thoughts in peace. Sometimes he would enter Dean’s room to sleep, and Dean would already be on his bed, arms folded behind his head, and he would say distinctly, “Not tonight, buddy,” or “Bunk with Sam”, and Castiel would sleep on the second cot, the one at the end of Sam’s bed. He did not know why Dean occasionally banned him from the room, but as he enjoyed talking with Sam, he didn’t let it worry him too much.

So, it was an unfortunate coincidence that this morning, waking to find his body had betrayed him in sleep in the worst way, he was in Dean’s room a few feet away from the sprawled, sleeping figure. Castiel let out the small breath he realised he’d been holding. He had absolutely no idea what to do with this unfortunate event. Of course, he knew in theory everything there was to know about the male human body. He had rebuilt one, after all. But as with everything else, he was beginning to suspect that theory really didn’t cut it when you were trapped in the middle of experience. He could not understand how this had happened. His understanding and observation had led him to believe that men got erections when stimulated sexually. He had been asleep! He felt oddly tricked and betrayed, as if his body were conspiring against him. It was also his observation that men found these events pleasurable. He did not. It was terrifying, because he also knew how men alleviated the problem and, clearly, that wasn’t, was _never_ , going to happen. He didn’t feel quite as separate from his vessel’s body as he once had – after all, he washed it, cared for it and moved it around, piloting solo. But this… this… area… he had left alone as far as he possibly could. Even in the shower, _things_ got a rapid wash with averted eyes. It was intensely embarrassing wearing someone else’s body let alone wearing someone else’s genitals. He had adopted an air of profound respect for Jimmy’s body while they had shared it, always maintaining Jimmy’s preferred style of dress and respecting the holy choices he had shown in matrimony and monogamy. But now it was _his_ body, and the angelic respect he had continued to show it was being thrown back in his face. He’d been out-manoeuvred in his sleep! Some solider of the lord he was. Thinking closely about the enemy lying hard and pulsing on his belly was not helping, however. Intense thought about it had enabled it to rally its forces and start… throbbing. It was disconcerting. He kept his good hand gripped in the sheets and his eyes wide, on alert. Perhaps he could trick it into submission, but it was stronger than he had anticipated and gave a deep, groin-aching throb. Then he smiled softly to himself. The enemy had been too clever and had given him the solution he needed to defeat it: throbbing. Very stealthily, keeping the element of surprise, he slid his damaged hand out from under the sheet, lined it up, and then brought it down sharply on the metal edge of the bed. 

“Oh, motherfu…. OH!” He doubled over in pain, pulling his knees up to his chest, desperately regretting his profanity but unable to even finish it due to the pain.

Dean was instantly out of bed and at his side. “You okay? What the fuck? I was asleep, Cas!”

Castiel groaned. “Yes. Apologies. I am fine. Thank you. I seemed to have hit my hand.” _And he had defeated the enemy_. He smirked, pleased at the resumption of soft normality. Dean looked around suspiciously for a while then regrettably back at his warm, comfortable bed, and then slouched off to claim the hot water. Castiel sat up and felt tempted to show his aching hand to the defeated enemy to guilt it into more honourable future behaviour but felt this might be misconstrued if anyone came in whilst he was doing it. 

Later that day he wished he had, because far from being defeated, the enemy had merely been regrouping and reassessing strategy, because it popped up, flags waving, during breakfast and then again when he was idly watching daytime TV and _again_ when he was reading – a religious text no less. It was terrifying, bewildering and utterly infuriating, because something was clearly wrong with his vessel. He wondered if it was the antibiotics or pain meds he was taking and took the opportunity of being alone with Sam to ask him about the potential side-effects. Sam frowned. “You okay? Sick? Dizzy? Headaches? Anxiety attacks? Increased heart rate?” Castiel answered him that he had none of the above, but could he expect anything… else? At Sam’s “Like what?” he was defeated and retreated to regroup. He debated borrowing Sam’s laptop and googling erections, but even he, with almost no experience of using a computer, sensed that this might give him more information than was currently useful. He wasn’t stupid or naïve, and knew there were medical books he could consult for erectile dysfunction, but this was different. He’d been attacked and sideswiped by erectile _function_ , and he wanted it to stop. To his relief he made it through to the evening without another attack, something he vaguely understood might be due to the anxiety he was feeling and the subsequent stress upon his body. So, good, he could either repeatedly hit his injured hand on things or try to keep himself in a permanent state of tension. 

Or he could ask someone for help.

Currently he was going for the hitting his hand as the least awful option.

He headed up to bed that night exhausted, only to discover that this was one of the nights when Dean was already there, lying on his side, back to the door, reading a magazine. He said swiftly, “Sam’s room, Cas.” Castiel hesitated and wondered if this might be a good time to bring up his… problem. Dean did not appear to be doing anything important, but at Dean’s slightly more urgent, “Hey, buddy, other room,” he retreated. Maybe he could ask Sam. But even as Castiel slid off his sweatpants and climbed under the sheet he knew this would never happen. It would be like a father asking his son for advice. He wondered if he could ask Bobby and ran various scenarios through his head as he waited anxiously for the enemy to creep up on him again. Oddly, thinking about these possible conversations with Bobby about inappropriate erections seemed to keep the enemy at bay, and he fell asleep with the faint hope that the events of the day had been one offs – the result, perhaps, of his vessel finally relinquishing control to him - events which he, being an angel of the lord, had now conquered. He awoke when Sam rolled out of bed stretching and slamming around the room looking for clothes, to discover that the enemy had merely been positioning reinforcements for a more prolonged campaign. He was now lying on his belly in a large wet patch, and the enemy was twitching a little victory dance against the prominent bones of his hip. He was utterly defeated; surrender and humiliation seemed likely to follow. He was clearly cut off from his Father’s mercy. But then, just as he’d lost faith, he heard Dean bellow up from below that he was a lazy fucker and they were going into town for supplies and he better have his ass out of bed when they got back, and then the whole house went quiet. 

His Father had not forsaken him.


	11. Chapter 11

They’d taken Bobby’s truck, so Dean had a rare hour of doing nothing, arm on the window ledge, one ankle crossed on his thigh, jiggling his leg to the Godawful music emerging from the old hunter’s radio. His peace was shattered by Sam asking, “You notice anything odd about Cas?”

Bobby snorted. “That boy’s as odd as a bunch of pink bananas. What d’ya have in mind?”

Of course Dean had noticed a strange shift in Castiel’s behaviour. He noticed pretty much everything to do with Castiel. They were forced together for hours – worked, ate, slept and lived together in close proximity. But now he had begun to not only observe Castiel all the time, but think about him too, and not in the way he had been used to constantly think about him before the fall – that referencing everything to the angel when he wasn’t there: _huh, Cas’ll like this; wonder what Cas’ll think of that._ He had often watched Castiel, wondering what he had looked like in other meat suits when he had walked the world before, wondering whether he would have recognised him, known him. He’d put Cas into other vessels, trying to see if he could separate the angel from the image. He’d put him into Zachariah’s once, and pictured Castiel walking around, talking and doing annoying Castiel-like things in that body. It was sort of okay. He could get behind it. It was still Castiel. 

But this new thinking - this was _more_. This was _different_. And it had begun with a razor running over stubble on pale skin. During that first shave, shifting his fingers to lay them over Castiel’s lips, he had begun to think about this body. He began to think not how much he would still like Castiel in another body, but how much he liked _this_ body with Castiel in it. It was a profound change of view. He would not push his fingers into the hair of another man as he was pushing his fingers into this dark hair. He would not want to feel another man’s lips moving against his palm as he wanted to feel these lips. He had never wanted to bend and smell the warm skin of another man’s neck – but, God help him, he wanted to smell this skin. Dean wanted to do all these things to Castiel, and he had wanted to since an innocent buddy’s hug alongside a road somewhere in South Dakota. He lay awake at night consuming Castiel in his mind, crushing him, pulling him apart, licking, tasting, eating for Christ’s sake, and that’s when he realised he needed some time away. He needed space to come to terms with what had happened, the abrupt changes in their lives. Castiel had fallen from heaven, but Dean had been the one to catch him, and the angel was not the only one struggling to cope. He had once had a profound bond with an enigmatic celestial being. Now he had a fist full of silky black hair and an erection that made his feet go numb when he’d relieved it behind the workshop. He needed more space than the few nights when he ordered Castiel out of his room. A few days, a week, maybe two, and he’d return to the man with whom he could have a normal bond: a hunter; a brother; a friend. He would fit Castiel into his life with Sam and Bobby and make it work and this… this was the result of shock and guilt and seeing Cas’s blood falling on cookie dough for _him_ , splattering on his face to save _his_ life. The guilt of almost losing him, his helplessness, his humiliation. It was bad timing. That’s all it was. Bad timing. He was confusing the over-protectiveness of a big brother with other feelings. He would go, but he would return with his head back in the game.

“Dean?”

“Huh?”

“Cas? You think he’s being weird?”

“No idea. Let’s eat.”

By the time they got home, Dean had decided to take Sam with him. That was part of the problem – the normal dynamic of their lives had been pushed off kilter by the angel. He needed space, but he also needed routine, and Sammy was routine. He needed another man around who also had hair and eyes and skin but around whom he could function without weird thoughts. The Brothers Winchester; a road trip; something to kill - he felt better already. An hour on the computer, and he had a hunt located, Sam briefed, and they jogged up the stairs together to pack bags.

Castiel was in Sam’s room sitting on the small bed looking thoughtful. “Are you going somewhere?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.” Even Sam’s bag looked guilty. 

Castiel went into Dean’s room. “Where is…? You are packing, too. Where are we going?”

Dean stopped and looked up. “Me and Sammy this time. Got a hunt.”

“You and…. What about me?”

“No can do, Cas. You need to….”

“I am perfectly well, Dean. I do not need to participate in the hunt, but I can accompany you.”

“I said no.”

“I don’t understand. Why?”

“Because.”

“You are going to leave me? On my own? I am not a dog, Dean, that you can abandon when you are bored of it.”

“Jesus, Cas, remind me never to buy you a pet. You won’t be on your own – Bobby’ll be here.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

Dean tried not to smile and lose his concentration. Castiel took a step closer. Dean kept his back turned and shut his eyes. “My hand hurts. How am I going to…?”

“I told you, Dude, only babies whine.”

Castiel narrowed his eyes at Dean’s back and made a tactical withdrawal to Sam’s room. “Why is Dean excluding me?” 

Sam tried to fold in on himself. “I don’t know, Cas. Honestly, I….”

“This is what you said you would do.”

“No, I swear, Cas. You’ve been cool. You saved his life. You’re one of us.”

Castiel watched him jog down the stairs and said to the empty air, “But clearly I am not. Am I?”

Sam piled into the front seat. Dean was already in the driver’s seat, tapping out the rhythm of the old rock song on the radio, and they drove off without a backward glance, the backseat of the car achingly empty. Castiel sensed Bobby coming to stand alongside him as he watched the dust cloud from the porch. “Well that was sudden. You got one blessed idea what that was all about?”

“I believe Dean has realised that I am a liability, and he no longer wants me as a hunter. This is his way of giving me time and space to leave of my own accord.”

Bobby turned to him slowly and looked him up and down. “Dear Lord and all his idjit angels. You’re more of a fool than either of those two numbskulls together.” He poked Cas in the chest, clearly a family trait. “Listen up, sonny. That boy has spent the last two weeks lookin’ after you, mornin’ and night. He’s given you same care he’s given his fool brother all these years. He’s fed you, washed you, watched over you like a damn mother hen, much as he’s got it in him to mother anyone seein’ as he was badly short-changed in the parenting stakes. So, pull your Goddamned head out of your ass about Dean. You ain’t a girl, and you sure as hell ain’t gonna be a whiny baby on my watch. You on board with what I’m sayin’ here?”

Castiel had led heaven’s most fearsome and loyal garrison, but he had never been subjected to a Bobby Singer tirade before. He licked his lips and found his voice. “Yes.” 

It appeared to satisfy the old hunter. He snorted and waved to the kitchen. “Go make yerself useful. Put the damn coffee on.”


	12. Chapter 12

Living with Bobby was a novelty. Castiel tried to remind himself once every day that he had fallen from heaven partially for novelty, so this was good. Their conversations were interesting, mainly because Castiel had finally found a human language that he couldn’t speak fluently. It added spice to the day, however: the translating, the misunderstandings and the consequent apologies. That all of this was on his side did not escape his notice. But he gave the old hunter the respect his age and experience merited and refrained from pointing out that, given their relative _actual_ age and experience, he should be the one being shown some respect. They organised their day carefully and with consideration, Bobby doing exactly what he would be doing without Castiel there, and the angel left to fend mostly for himself. As Castiel didn’t understand the concept of boredom, he was content to explore the house, read the books and watch the empty spaces. 

It was with some surprise, therefore, on the third day that Bobby said to him in passing, “Yer ringin’, idjit.” Castiel frowned as he attempted to translate, but this one defeated him, so he followed Bobby into the kitchen and sat at the table with an expectant look. Bobby ignored him for a while until he said with more emphasis, “You gonna sit with yer head in yer ass or you gonna answer that?”

Castiel tried narrowing his eyes to see if this aided the bizarre conversation. Finally, the old man reached across the table, and to Castiel’s horror began rummaging in the pocket of his sweatpants. He pulled back in shock; Bobby snorted in derision, pulled out his hand, and tossed Castiel’s cellphone on the table. “God save me from the damn fool I got in this house. Answer yer damn phone, angel.” Castiel finally worked out what the annoying music he had been hearing all morning was. He fumbled it up between his bandage and good hand and held it to his ear. 

“Cas?”

Ah.

He stood up and went to the sink, his back to the table. 

“Cas? You there?”

He debated his options. He could of course just say yes. It was the truth after all: he was here. But instead, he quietly clicked the cover shut and pushed the phone back into his pocket. Yes, he was here. Not there.

Bobby gave him a look that for once didn’t need translating, so he went up to his room and sat on his bed, the room that used to be Dean’s and the bed that used to be Dean’s, until Dean was there and not here. He spread out in the centre of the bed and waited and was not surprised when the tinny music sounded once more. It rang for a long time. A surprisingly long time. Cas was almost impressed.

He heard a phone ringing somewhere else in the house and a muttered conversation. He moved stealthily down and out to the yard. 

A minute or so later his phone rang again. This time he pulled it out of his pocket with difficulty and opened it. 

“Where the fuck are you? Why aren’t you answering? Bobby said he won’t go look for you. Cas, you there?”

“Hello, Dean.” That silenced the other man. Castiel thought it might.

Eventually he heard a more controlled, “We’re in Atlanta.”

“Good.”

“Sam says hi.”

“Good.”

“You’re pissed.”

“Are you having good weather?”

“What the…? Why are you asking about the damn weather?”

“Is it not still customary to ask about the weather?”

“Cut the fricking crap. How are you?”

“Good.”

“How’s the hand? And if you say good again I’ll ram that damn….” Castiel stared at his closed phone. He liked this human form of communication. Unlike angel voices, which he had not been able to prevent, Dean was like TV: you could turn off his crap. He slid up onto the hood of an old truck and closed his eyes to the sun, relishing the feeling of heat on his skin. He sat here most days and had watched in fascination as his skin darkened. His phone rang again. He hadn’t put it away so flipped it open with his good hand. “What? I’m busy, Dean.”

There was a pause before Dean said incredulously, “Doing what?”

“I’m sulking. I am finding it a very time consuming activity.”

Dean chuckled. “You been practicing, huh?”

“Every day.”

“How’s your hand? Seriously?”

“Bobby is a very conscientious nurse.”

“Okay, Cas, word to the wise? Never let him hear you say that. You two getting on okay?”

“It might be better if you asked that of him.”

“I did.”

“Oh.”

“You gonna ask?”

“Probably not.”

There was a long pause, and Castiel could think of nothing to fill it and yet everything he wanted to say. He hated this human form of communication. He forced himself not to ask what he really wanted to know and just said evenly, “Goodbye, Dean.”

Unfortunately his days were now filled with something other than pretending to explore the house, read the books and not be bored. Now he had waiting for another call from Dean to occupy his time. 

At the end of the second week they returned. They had apparently saved a haunted casino, salting and burning the remains of a gambler who had died at the slots and been left propped up for some days before anyone had realised he’d actually died. It had left him, understandably, pissed. It seemed that the brothers had had fun, although both were fairly circumspect about their activities around Castiel. He did not appreciate having Bobby tell him that he should have gone with them and got himself laid too, and got rid of that stick up his ass while he was about it. 

It was almost awkward having them home. Castiel had not realised how loud the brothers were, how loud Dean was, until he had been absent. He and Bobby had rarely done more than grunt and frown at each other, and now the constant barrage of meaningless expressions rang around the house once more as Dean unpacked, did laundry, demanded feeding, showered, ate again and generally made himself at home. As he did not appear to want to speak with him, Castiel removed himself to the peace and quiet of the yard and his truck and his sunshine. 

Dean found him asleep there later that afternoon and woke him up by tossing something in his lap. “Wake up, sleepyhead. I brought you a present.”

Castiel picked up the small bag with his good hand and observed it closely. “What is it?”

Dean huffed and muttered something under his breath. Castiel handed it back, but at Dean’s hurt expression, he waved his bandage in explanation. Dean grinned and ripped open the bag, fished inside and held up the contents. Castiel frowned. “It’s a ball.”

Dean nodded. “It is. It’s a….” and he demonstrated by squeezing the ball repetitively in one hand, the muscles in his arm cording and standing out. Castiel watched in fascination and held out his good hand. To Dean’s intense annoyance Castiel could squeeze the ball tighter with his left hand than Dean could with his right. The muscles also stood out on the angel’s bare arm. Dean watched. After a few minutes he shook himself slightly and said gruffly, “You’re brown.”

Castiel was still squeezing the ball, seemingly hypnotised by the sensation. “This is very pleasing.” 

“Well, yeah, it’s for… when… you know. I’m taking that bandage off tomorrow.”

He watched Castiel for a while longer then tentatively slid up on the hood with him, leaning against the glass. Castiel murmured, “You will burn.”

Dean snorted. “I’m a guy.” They sat in something like companionable silence until Dean said a little forced, “So, did you miss me?”

“Did you want me to?”

“Look, Cas, I’m sorry you didn’t come, yeah. Too dangerous.”

“Three waitresses and one stripper with a nose ring were too dangerous for you?” 

“I’ll kill Sammy. And it was one waitress and the stripper’s ring wasn’t in her nose.”

“I don’t care, Dean. Why are you telling me this?”

“Because that’s what friends do, Cas. Buddies. Guys. They fuck women and talk about it with their friends.”

“Oh. Well perhaps you have chosen the wrong friend then, because I do not want to, as you say, fuck women, and I most certainly don’t want to talk about women with you.”

“Damn you, Cas. Damn you!” And with that Dean slid off the truck, kicked the tyre and strode back to the house.

Something about this conversation with Dean was more puzzling than normal, but Castiel was too fascinated by the feeling of the muscles in his hand as he played with the new toy to give it any more thought. If he watched the ball carefully enough and squeezed hard enough, he didn’t have to think about Dean at all.

The evening seemed longer than usual, longer than when he’d sat watching Bobby read, and those evenings had seemed very long indeed. Now he had Sam and Bobby to watch and, of course, Dean. But Dean was just drinking and staring at his beer bottle morosely, so that was not the most fascinating subject of study either. Castiel had had something of an epiphany with his body in the two weeks Dean had been away. He had admitted to himself on the first day that not relieving the unpleasant swellings had only caused more problems (and laundry) so he had relented, and after the second or third morning of ruined sheets he’d woken early, showered early and gotten rid of the problem in the way he knew other men did. Unfortunately, this had not proved to be as unpleasant as he had anticipated. Once he’d gotten over the initial shame of touching himself it had been _extremely_ pleasant, if short-lived, and afterwards he could not really say it had been any more shameful than doing other physical things for pleasure, like eating, or lying in the sun. It was all part of the human experience he had fallen from heaven for, so after that first time he’d decided that he owed it himself to experience this as often as possible. He was a quick study and basically that had been the only other thing he’d done for two weeks: roaming bored around the house, waiting for Dean to call and enjoying his newly discovered body. But, of course, although Castiel was enjoying this new experience, he was doing it in as pure a way as he knew how. As he told Dean, he certainly did not think about women or imagine sexual situations in his head. He could not even being to describe how inappropriate that would be for an angel. His body was waking up; he was becoming more human every day, but he still tried to maintain a certain angelic grace. Perhaps it was just a misplaced soldier’s discipline, but it was important to him. He would certainly like to explore touch more with Dean, because he felt safe with Dean, and clearly touch from Dean was in no way sexual. When he had first met Dean, staring at him and being in his presence had been enough to satisfy him, for he was a being of light and air. As he’d changed and become flesh and muscle and skin, his needs had changed, and now he wanted flesh and muscle and skin from Dean. It was appropriate for a soldier. So, Dean, sitting on the couch staring at his beer was particularly frustrating. Castiel could think of no excuse to get him to… do something else. Anything. He narrowed his eyes and considered offering to play cards, but that didn’t seem likely to lead to much touching. Perhaps they could go out, to a bar, play pool. He wondered if there were bars anywhere without blonde sisters and where everyone wore underwear. Probably not. It was perplexing. He almost envied the slick green bottle in Dean’s hands, and that was the strangest thought he’d had since thinking that Bobby was groping him. Dean ran his hand up and down the cool glass, swirled his palm over the open end, circled one finger around and around the small damp circle. Castiel stood abruptly. “I am going to take a shower.”

Dean looked up, and they stared at one another for a long time, until Bobby broke the moment by muttering that that would be the third damn shower the fricking angel had taken that day and how clean did anyone need to be. 

This was not one of the nights when Castiel was banished to Sam’s room, possibly because Dean did not come up to bed until many hours later, and then he staggered in with a distinctly unbalanced gait. Castiel was still awake and watched in the darkness as Dean fell face first on the bed and appeared to pass out almost instantly. He hesitated for a moment then climbed out of his own bed and went over. He unlaced Dean’s boots and pulled them off, placing them gently on the ground. He reached down and pulled the covers up, and then, because this felt so familiar, he sat on the edge of the bed for a while, watching. He wished he could refresh Dean with a thought, make his drunken dreams more pleasant. Take away his inevitable hangover. He had done all this before in their time together before the fall. He missed that power, and yet… it had been so clinical. Almost ethereal in its way: a thought and it was done. Now cleaning Dean would involve helping him to the shower, soaping his body…. “Thanks, Cas.” For a bewildering moment Castiel thought Dean was thanking him for things he was doing in his mind, but he looked up to Dean’s face to see that he was mostly awake and watching him with unfocused eyes. He risked a small pat and replied, “I did not want you to get cold.”

Dean licked his lips and stared at Castiel for a long time then said in an odd voice, “I’m still cold….” Castiel stood up and fetched a blanket from his bed and added it to Dean’s. 

“Goodnight, Dean.” Dean’s hand flew out, and he caught Castiel’s arm. Castiel patted the hand fondly, enjoying the touch for a moment, then returned to his bed. He heard Dean groan loudly and did not envy him his hangover in the morning.


	13. Chapter 13

Dean’s plan to remove Castiel’s bandages less than a month after his accident worried Sam. Although the doctors he had spoken to at the medical facility had been oddly reticent and unwilling to discuss their patient, Sam had come away with the impression that Cas would need additional surgery on his flexor tendons if he was ever to regain full movement of his fingers. They had done a temporary repair, as was normal for emergency surgery, but only a qualified hand surgeon would have the necessary further expertise. Dean, however, appeared to have his own reasons for getting a fully functioning angel back, able to look after himself once more. Uncharacteristically, he told Sammy to shut his mouth, and he marched Castiel to the kitchen and forced him to sit. Cas laid his hand on the table between them. He had not had a good night for some reason. He wondered if he had begun to dream, for it felt as if his head had spun all night with thoughts he could not control but was unsure whether they were sleeping or waking ones. All he did know was that they were extremely unpleasant and all involved stabbing Dean with his sword, which clearly he did not want to do.

Dean looked at Castiel and asked, “Ready?”

Castiel replied, “Of course,” and the cutting began. They worked in silence, focused on the slowly revealing hand. The last layers had to be soaked off and were disgusting, the usual mix of unpleasant human gunk and even more unpleasant medical gunk. At last the hand lay uncovered between them. Dean suddenly rose and went to stand at the sink, his back to Castiel, his shoulders hunched. Cas turned to look at the tense back, and Dean, sensing the gaze, returned to the table and sat down heavily. “I’m sorry.”

Castiel blinked and reviewed in one swift thought all Dean’s reactions to his injury since it had happened. “You knew.”

Dean hesitated but then took the completely healed hand in his own. “A nurse… met her in a bar that night….” He looked up swiftly at Castiel’s expression and decided to give the sanitized version of his meeting with one of Castiel’s nurses. “She said the doctors were talking about a miracle. A hand and severed fingers, the artery…. They’d prepped for surgery then…. They’d stitched the guy up same day - as an _outpatient_. I kinda made a wild guess that was you.”

“You knew I still had the last of my grace? That I’d healed, but you allowed me to be….” He indicated the mess of bandages on the table with an angry sweep of it to the floor.

“Cas, wait. You still had…. Look.” Dean turned the pale hand over. “Look at the scars, buddy, here and here, you almost lost your thumb. You had so many stitches. Remember how much it hurt? I reckon your grace saved your fingers, but you were so badly hurt human healing had to do its thing too.”

“I don’t understand, Dean. Why would you not tell me? It makes no sense.”

“I thought….” Dean squared his jaw aggressively. “You still thought you were a damn angel, Cas, when you grabbed that fricking blade. You know what the most dangerous thing on a hunt is? Not the weak guy who can’t keep up, but the strongest guy who thinks he’s invincible because he _is_ so strong and fast and just so _damn_ good. And, Cas, Jesus, buddy, you were so fast. The blade and then you were fighting it and holding it so damn tight.” Dean rubbed his hands frantically over his face. “You still saw yourself as an angel, Cas. You thought you wouldn’t get hurt. Well you did. And I wanted you to… _get it_. See how freaky long it takes us to heal. What it means. How much it just damn well slows you down, so you don’t do it again. You can’t do that again, Cas. Not for me, not for anyone.”

They stared at each other. “I would do exactly the same again. If I had to. You must know that. I saw the knife. I saw your….” He smiled softly. “I like your eyes, Dean.”

As Dean held Castiel’s gaze and saw the depth of emotion in the dark blue eyes, he knew that he was truly lost. Cas was the one who had fallen, but he was the one who had crashed and burned.

He forced his gaze to the window and regrouped. It was what he did, what he’d always do. He heard a soft wince and looked back to see Castiel trying to flex and bend his fingers. It wasn’t going so well. Dean sighed and took hold of the hand once more. “Small steps, hey? Just work them for a few minutes at a time, okay? Use the ball. Even with freaky angel mojo, they’re gonna hurt.” Castiel nodded obediently then spent the rest of the day totally ignoring the advice and working his fingers hard all the time. By the end of the day he was incredibly sore and stiff, but pleased with the result. They worked. The worst thing now though was the… colour… or lack of it, which seemed to give Sammy and Bobby near hysteria every time they saw him. Four weeks in the sun for the rest of his arms had turned them a deep, golden brown, but he now had a bone white hand stuck on the end like a freaky waiter’s glove. They called it Casper. Castiel had never had a part of his body named and he didn’t like it.

Dean spent the rest of the day with Baby, checking her over after the trip. He had never appreciated more the legitimate excuse the car gave him to just get away from everything. For someone usually so confident and self-assured, he felt he was drowning in unwanted thoughts and feelings. He didn’t do feelings unless they were ones about things he understood: bravery, loyalty, courage, family, right, wrong, pain, suffering, success and failure – these were the currency of his life. He added lust and sex and the occasional flashes of tenderness with girls. So where in all that did these infuriating feeling for Castiel fit? The Castiel who had held his hand and his gaze and said I like your eyes. Guys didn’t do that kind of shit. It wasn’t helping. Not only was he mooning over some guy like a girl, but that guy was totally clueless - didn’t get basic guy rules. He didn’t want to _talk about women_. Dean did disgusted, sarcastic air quotes in his head. He didn’t want to talk about _fucking_. More air quotes. _I like your eyes_. Christ on a fricking cross. He was a mess, and he knew it. He had feelings but had no idea what they were or where he wanted to go with them. He couldn’t continue to think about Cas’s hair and his eyes and his warm skin (and hey, that frickin tan looked good on him) all day, because there was nowhere to go with these thoughts. He was angry. Damn it, he wasn’t six. He knew what fucking lust was. He’d seen that waitress in Atlanta, looked at her hair and eyes and skin, wanted her, hit on her. _Had her_. This was the same, so why was it so unfathomably different? He didn’t want freaking sex with Castiel! He couldn’t even begin to imagine it – the awkwardness, the damn crazy questions and constant flow of inappropriate fucking observations. It actually made him chuckle. And besides, it would be like seducing the world’s biggest kid, and that was just _wrong_. He was damn sure Castiel had no interest in bodies or sex. He never watched women, hell he’d just said he didn’t even want to fucking _talk_ about them. Who didn’t want to talk about women? Besides, if they did….. Jesus, where? It wasn’t like they could sit on the couch, his hands on Cas, in his hair…. Shit. He didn’t even have his own space. Except Baby….. Dean frowned and stretched around the propped hood to consider the backseat of the Impala. Been there, done that. He snorted in derision. Like the angel would demean himself with a back seat hump. This was a guy who expected humans to pick up his damn laundry and obey his fucking commands. _Show me some respect_. Fuck. He’d fallen a long way from showing Castiel respect. What was he thinking? Debasing a celestial creature. He’d go to hell. Again. And for what? For pretty bits? For freaking fuck-me-now hair and do-it-again eyes? He’d dig the damn eyes out of his freaking angel head and rip that pretty hair off his head and put them a box like some sick trophy-keeping serial killer freak. _Then_ he could stop thinking about it all! But it wasn’t enough. He wanted more. He wanted it _all_ , but what the hell was _all_? He’d never had _all_ with anyone. Thousands of woman (okay, hundreds)(ah, fuck it, thousands) and what _all_ did he have? Waitresses, nurses, the occasional stripper (if he was lucky), motel receptionists, a hunter or two (or three), hell, a few cops. He grinned and licked his lips. One FBI lady, nice. Huh, a mortician, but that’d been an off day. Oh, yeah, the masseur with fringe benefits, but he was getting distracted now. The point was, no fucking _all_. With any of them. Great few hours (okay minutes, give a guy a break) then zip. Nada. So, great. Life sucked. He straightened his back and winced. The solution was staring him in the face. He’d been kicked in the balls by women before (and not just metaphorically) when he’d hit on them and they weren’t interested, and he’d _gotten over it_ , moved on, no hard feelings. That blonde forest ranger. There you go, classic example. This was good. She’d said no, but all he could see was her strawberry blonde hair. She’d said it again, but he’d moved on to her eyes, deep, deep brown eyes. She’d said no again, just as his fingers had eased her beige uniform shirt away from her neck…. _Jesus_. So, anyway, she’d said no. He’d backed off, and the next morning she was a bottle blonde with weirdly fat hips. So, hair, skin, yadda yadda yadda. The point being, that’s what he needed to do here. Package Castiel and his damn body parts into a box labelled _get the fuck over it_ , pack it away and move on. Move on, nothing to see here folks. He pulled out from under the hood, eased it closed and turned to find Castiel a few inches from his face watching him. “Hello, Dean”

Castiel frowned. “Are you well? I have come to tell you we are eating.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Cas.”

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing. You know. Fixing Baby. How’s Casper?”

Castiel grimaced but held out his hand. Dean hissed. “That’s okay, buddy. I don’t need to frickin’ hold it!”

Cas frowned. “I don’t want you to hold it. I want you to grip it.”

_Oh, God_. “Grip it?”

“Dean, is something wrong? Test my grip.”

_Oh_. “Sure. Guy kinda thing. I get that.” He gripped Castiel’s hand and began to squeeze. Castiel squeezed back. Dean looked down at their hands. Castiel’s fingers were long and slim – beautiful hands not yet ruined like his by years of damage and working on cars. Oh, _shit_ , something else to add to his box of Castiel trophies. 

Suddenly though he found a cure for inappropriate thoughts about angel body parts: crushing pain in his knuckles. “Jesus, Cas, ease up!”

Castiel snorted. “Don’t blaspheme, Dean. Good, yes?”

Yeah, it was all good. All fricking peachy with no sign of that box being labelled and packed away any time soon.


	14. Chapter 14

Three fit and well hunters and a car all tuned up and ready to go. They had no excuse for not getting back to work. They needed it, particularly Castiel. Now injury free, the vibrant rebirth of his human body had reached a peak of intensity he could barely contain. He could hardly remember the days when he had stood quietly, contained within himself, when thought was all he needed and his body only a cumbersome vessel through which he interacted with the world. It seemed a very long time ago. Everything was intense. He could taste food as if it were zinging with energy. His fingertips ached to brush over everything because everything felt good and new. He breathed deeply and wanted to run and stretch and fight and just do something with this body so he could feel. Fortunately, being a disciplined soldier, he prided himself on the fact that no one had noticed he was restless and bored. So he was surprised one day when mooching around the workshop to be grabbed by Bobby and dragged to a corner with a, “If ya don’t take that damn angel mojo you got sparking outta you and burn it off with something, yer gonna combust my fricking car lot, feathers.” And with that the old hunter had dragged something out from under a tarp and shoved it in the angel’s hands. Castiel held it suspiciously, turning it over and over. “It this some kind of torture device?”

Bobby snorted with as much derision as he could muster and dragged Castiel to the side of the workshop. “It’s a basket, you fool. You miss one of these in those thousand years of watching us lesser beings?”

“Yes.” Castiel said in all innocence, thinking it would not be a very useful basket and wondered what was supposed to be carried in it.

“Oh, for the love of Christ.” The old hunter brought a ladder from the workshop and handed Castiel a hammer. “That’s as far as I go. Ask Sammy or Dean if you can’t figure it out fer yerself and don’t bother me no more.”

Castiel debated trying to figure this out for himself. He felt he ought to be able to. A ladder, a hammer and a large ring of metal that wouldn’t carry anything. Various combinations came to mind but nothing seemed quite right. It was huge relief therefore when he heard a delighted, “Hey, look at that. Sammy come get a load of what Cas’s found,” and whatever it was being snatched off him. Dean had no trouble combining the ladder, hammer and odd metal thing in the correct combination until the hoop-thing was mounted on the side of the workshop. Castiel was still stumped and stood gazing at it in wonder until Dean returned from a sprint to the attic with a large, slightly deflated, ball. When that had been re-inflated it was thrown at Castiel, who caught it dutifully. Then they stared at each other. “Well?”

“Well what, Dean? What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Christ on a stick, Cas. You’re supposed to throw the ball through the basket. Basketball, yeah?”

“Oh.” Castiel did and watched it sail neatly through the basket and roll off along the ground. “It does not seem a very interesting or challenging activity.”

Dean grinned. “Yeah, but now you’re gonna try that again when I’m tryin’ to stop you.” He threw the ball back at Castiel. 

“How are you going to try and stop me?” Castiel was becoming intrigued. If he wanted to throw the ball again, he would, so how would…. Ah, that’s how. They were flat on the ground, Dean lying on top him, the ball in _his_ hands behind his back. Castiel narrowed his eyes. “Is that allowed?”

Dean chuckled. “My ball, my rules.”

“I will try again.” They stood and shook themselves off. Dean politely handed over the ball. Castiel watched him for a moment, made a small move, Dean countered, Castiel was fast, but Dean tripped him and wrestled him to the ground once more. Castiel pushed him off with a flicker of real annoyance and stood up. “Again.” Castiel had always been a quick study, and he was a soldier, so the next time Dean tripped him and they fell to the ground, he twisted out from under Dean before he could get the ball, flipped to standing and took his shot. 

Dean nodded slowly as he rose from the ground. “You know what this is, don’t you, buddy?”

“Yes. I believe it is called war.” 

It was exactly what Castiel needed and wanted. He let his usual careful restraint with humans go, unafraid to tackle and hit and smash Dean to the ground, just as Dean was doing to him. They fought for the ball, wrestling it out of each other’s hands in no approximation of any game ever played. There were no rules except the winner got to crow over the loser. Even biting came into play after a while, but as Castiel had Dean in a headlock and was trying to bend his fingers back, there was only biting left. Castiel ripped his bitten arm away, and cursed. He actually called Dean a motherfucking whore but this only made Dean laugh so much that Castiel won that shot easily. They were covered in sweat and blood and grime from the yard, skin slippery and hard to catch. They paused, eyeing each other, Castiel tossing the ball from one hand to the other temptingly. Dean twitched to the left, but Castiel only laughed softly and began tossing it higher. Dean smirked, bent as if his back were hurting him, then came up with a handful of grit and sand and tossed it in Castiel’s face. Temporarily blinded, Castiel went on the attack and rammed Dean to the ground, the ball lost and rolling off on its own, forgotten. He grabbed the hem of Dean’s T-shirt and yanked it up hard, covering his face and holding it there while he tried to rub the stinging grit from his face. Dean kicked and wriggled, so Castiel sat on him and pressed his weight into the now bare chest. “Surrender?” He wasn’t sure what all the words meant, but guessed Dean’s reply meant no. Dean suddenly jerked and flipped him over his head in a weird kind of way he must have learnt fighting demons, and Castiel crashed into the side of a car with a painful thump. He could reach the ball though, which was all that mattered, and he had it up and through the annoying metal thing before Dean could reach him. He bent and put his hands on his knees. He was panting, which was amazing and really interesting, but he didn’t get to enjoy it because once again he was being tackled, but Dean only managed to snag his shirt and the shirt tore. Castiel hissed in annoyance and ripped the rest off, barrelling into Dean and pinning him against the wall of the workshop. Dean pushed him off and ripped his T-shirt over his head, throwing it onto Cas’s shirt on the ground. They circled each other warily. Dean had the advantage of weight and muscle, but they both knew Castiel was stronger and faster and could think like lightning in a fight. But he didn’t have street smarts, and Dean did, and it made them evenly matched. Castiel didn’t take his eyes off Dean, but bent and picked up the forgotten ball. He bounced it cheekily off the wall just far enough away from Dean so he could not reach it. Dean laughed. “Yeah. Good one.”

Castiel could taste the coppery flavour of blood in his mouth and he spat onto the ground. Dean raised his eyes in surprise. “Nice, Cas. Good look for an angel of the lord”. 

“I am no longer an angel, Dean.” He tossed the ball to his other hand, trying to temp Dean to come closer. 

Dean backed off slightly, partially to think of a new move, but mainly so he could process what he’d just heard. For the first time ever, Castiel had admitted he wasn’t an angel, but not in a regretful way, not implying that he was therefore less than he had been, but with an amused try-and-fuck-with-me-now expression on his face. Bare chest, blood running from his lip, his face filthy from the dirt of the yard and hair sticking up and plastered down at random, he certainly didn’t look like an angel. He looked like a man. Dean moved. It was fast. Incredibly fast. He sprang and took the man down, pinned him to the dirt and thrust a knee into his groin. The implication was clear: move and you’re junkless. Castiel licked his bloody lip, debating whether it was worth it to win. Dean pushed his knee tighter in. Castiel’s eyes widened. Dean flicked up his eyebrow knowing how much this was gonna hurt. Castiel swallowed visibly. “I think we should call this a draw.” Dean deflated onto Castiel’s chest, chuckling. His bare chest slid against Castiel’s on their combined sweat. He lifted his hand and brushed his thumb across Castiel’s split lip. Castiel lay beneath him, his eyes bright from the exercise. Dean moved his hand up and tugged the feathers of dark hair off his forehead. He pushed his fingers into the long strands on top. Castiel blinked slowly. Dean looked down at him, his gaze slowly moving down to soft lips. He seemed about to speak but then frowned and glanced down to where they were joined. His eyes widened. “Thought you weren’t having that problem yet, buddy.”

Castiel kept his gaze locked on Dean. He was still in the game, still twisting and turning in Dean’s arms, pushing him to the ground, holding him down. _Touching him_. He blinked and said distinctly, “I have not found it a problem.”

Dean carefully eased himself off the other man. He stood then offered a hand to Castiel. The ball lay forgotten at their feet. Dean took a breath and said, “We should find a hunt tonight. Leave tomorrow.”

Castiel nodded. “I think that would be a good idea.” He brushed casually at his lip once more then asked, “Am I invited this time?”

Dean began to walk away. “Buddy? I think you just invited yourself.”


	15. Chapter 15

Although the interior of the Impala was obviously far smaller than that of Bobby Singer’s house, for some reason that next morning it gave Dean a sense of freedom and space he had not had since their return from Atlanta. They were driving to Arizona, four days on the road if all went well, but even with those long hours in the small space with the other two men, it smelt like freedom. The previous evening had been… tense. They were both battered and bruised, but in a good way. Nothing that needed Sam’s concerned ministrations or deserved Bobby’s derision. They were okay. Minor scrapes. And a few bites. Possibly a cracked rib. He wanted to be left alone to think about it, to relive the game, play it differently here or there. What if he’d… would Cas have… and perhaps the most obvious question… why hadn’t he? Why hadn’t he seized that one moment when he could have answered so many questions about what he wanted from Castiel? Bloody, mussed, exhausted, but sparking with pleasure, the angel had been his, lying beneath him. If he’d only held tighter to that sweaty hair and pulled his face closer. If _he’d_ leant down. What would have happened? Did he really just think about kissing Castiel? Fuck, yeah. And he _wanted_ it. That would solve everything. That’s what he needed to know. What would Castiel do if he kissed him? And as far as Dean could see, it was all good. Either the angel would reject him, and he’d live with it, pack it into that box with the tan uniform and strawberry blonde hair, or Cas would say… yes. And that would be that. They’d kiss, chaste and fricking holy knowing Castiel, and Dean would have scratched the itch that was currently killing him. No harm done on either side. Castiel would probably enjoy it, like one of his freaky touching experiments. It would probably make him feel more part of Team Free Will. One of the guys. Kinda like celebrating his new human status. Maybe they could go out for a beer afterwards. All good. But he’d missed that one perfect opportunity now, and even after twelve hours of trying to come up with a scenario where he could recreate all those conditions it didn’t seem likely. Bloody, beaten and thrown to the ground…. Okaaay. So, a hunt. But Sam would probably be there…. Not good. Dean couldn’t even force in-his-head-Sam to agree that kissing Castiel in the middle of ganking some demon-bitch was just good team bonding, let alone picture Sam-for-real going for it. Maybe he should reverse the plan. Beer first then the kiss. That could work. It was how most of his other kisses had happened after all. Small steps. Getting Castiel drunk was far easier to plan than kissing him. Dean began to tap along to the music, singing the chorus. Life was good. 

Castiel was also pleased to be in the car, mainly because he was convinced that after his behaviour yesterday Dean would not only _not_ take him to Arizona, but he’d want him off the team entirely. He was falling. Every day a little more. And it wasn’t the becoming human; that had happened now. All flesh, no angel. It was the discovering daily what being human really meant. It was discovering the _flesh_ , and it was all so good. But, oh, he groaned when he thought of it. Hitting Dean, swearing, rolling around in the dirt and then… then…. arousal. What did he feel? Was it really humiliation? Was he really shamed that Dean had felt his excitement, his zest for life and his desire for the heat and the sweat and the flesh? Was he embarrassed? Or was he _glad_ it had happened. Dean’s face, the wariness… Seeing him at last as a _man_ and not a junkless angel. Dean had felt it, known what it meant, felt his power. He wished he could pray for guidance, but he knew no prayers for this. It changed everything. He could no longer be Dean’s curiosity, his oddly asexual buddy, the perfect third wheel. And if he could not be that, what was he? He was older and cleverer and faster and stronger and his knowledge was limitless. Where would Dean allow him to fit in his neatly arranged little hierarchy of men? Because it wasn’t Team Free Will. It never had been. It was Team Dean and they all knew it. Dean was the centre of mass around which they gravitated, orbiting satellites to his beauty and his purity of purpose. Castiel wasn’t so sure he wanted to orbit any more. He was flying free and he wanted Dean to watch him soar. What would have happened if he’d tried to express this to Dean in the blood and grit of the yard? That he wanted more than to be his wingman, his buddy, the butt of his best jokes and his… pet. What if he had pushed his power up into Dean’s knee, forced the issue between them. _Tell me who I am and what it means for me to be here_. But all he could see happening, if he forced Dean to acknowledge the profound changes between them, would be Dean sensing a rival and seeing him off. It was how the team worked. Dean at the top and Sammy and Cas his juvenile males, never allowed to grow up and be equal to Dean. He should not have allowed the game. He should not have gotten down and dirty in the muck with Dean Winchester. It had awoken a sleeping tiger within him and he roared to be set free.

“So, no one actually listening to me? Hello? Sam Winchester to earth?” Dean and Castiel both turned to Sam at the same time. Dean turned down the music and punched his brother lightly on the arm, seemingly in a good mood, and Castiel just watched the small interaction with an air of distracted gloom. “I’m listening, Bro.”

“So, what was I saying?”

“No idea. Anyone hungry?”

They all were, and it had been many hours since a hasty breakfast at Bobby’s, so Dean swung the car over at the first diner they came to, and they trooped in for feeding. Castiel had reverted to his favourite shirt and tie look as soon as he could use his hand properly, and it had not escaped his notice that if he went first it usually got them a better seat and friendlier service from the waitress. They ordered and sat, variously reading or tearing small strips off the menu or quietly watching the world through the window while they waited. Dean watched Castiel’s profile for a while then asked, “You want a beer?” 

Castiel frowned and shook his head. “I think I will…” and he waved vaguely at the bathroom. Dean watched him walk away, the menu shredding increasing. 

“Ask me if I want a beer, Dean, why don’t you?”

“Sam, it’s lunchtime. Jesus. So, when’re you gonna fill us in on the case?”

Sam turned in his seat and stared at his brother for a long moment. “And there we go folks, the surreal world of Sam Winchester.”

“Stop being a bitch, Samantha.”

“I have just spent the last hour telling you all about it, Dean. You nodded. You ah hah’d at appropriate moments. You total shit.”

Dean smirked. “I know you love telling me. Now you can do it all again.”

Castiel rejoined them and Sam looked relieved. “You can brief him, Cas, while I visit the bathroom.”

“Brief him on what?”

“The case? Why we’re driving to Arizona? Death Highway?”

“I know nothing about the case, Sam, you haven’t told us about it yet.”

Sam dropped his head onto the table at Dean’s chuckle and flipped him off as he left for the bathroom.

A slightly tenser silence fell over the table after his departure. Castiel swept the little pieces of the menu into interesting hieroglyphs for a while but then glanced over. “Dean, may I ask you something?” 

Dean straightened, “Sure, Dude. Fire away.”

“What does _play army_ with me mean?”

Dean reared back. “The fuck. Where did that come from?”

Castiel looked surprised at his reaction. “I was just asked that in the bathroom. _Do you want to play army with me_ , but I believe his voice was not as….”

“Who, Cas? Who asked you?”

Castiel pursed his lips. “I am guessing by your reaction that this was not a good thing.”

“Damn right it’s not. He wanted to… you know….”

“I don’t Dean or I would not have asked you to explain.”

“Army, man. Come on. What do the damn army do?”

“Dean! I don’t know. Shoot things? Kill them? He wanted me to kill him?”

“Jesus, Cas. He wanted to lie down and have you blow the hell out of him.”

“Oh.”

“Who was it?”

“Why? It is not important. I told him I was no longer a soldier and left, so no harm has been done.”

“What the hell, Cas? I’ll fucking beat the….”

“If I wanted his _shit_ beaten out of him, Dean, I would do it myself.”

“I should’a gone in with you. I should’a….”

“Maybe you should go and ensure that Sam is safe from predatory men in flannel shirts.”

“Sammy can take care of his own.”

“And I cannot?” Suddenly Castiel exploded out of his chair. He grabbed the front of Dean’s shirt and hauled him to standing, pulling him half over the table until they were face to face. “This is your problem, Dean. You are… you are… infuriating!”

Dean swallowed, cocked a small grin and said, “I was kinda going for adorable.”

Cas groaned and released Dean’s shirt, dropping into his chair, his head in his hands. “I am sorry. I am very sorry.”

Dean sat gingerly and brushed his shirt down. “That’s okay. I guess. You feelin’ okay there?”

Castiel leant back and closed his eyes. It was going to be a long four days.

 

The first night Dean wanted to keep driving but as he’d had no sleep the night before and felt too hollow to sleep in the car they were forced to stop. They couldn’t even get a room with two beds, but had to make do with one and a tiny bathroom. Dean laughed and said, “I guess we’ll have to hot bed it.”

Castiel’s eyes widened. “It will be very hot with three of us in it.”

“Hot bed, Dude. It means take it in turns.”

“Oh. That seems preferable.”

Sam put his laptop on the table and said pointedly, “Case? Anyone interested in what we’re doing?”

Castiel sat obediently on the end of the bed and Dean eased in alongside him. 

“Are you listening?” Sam smiled at the matching nodding. “Okay. So Highways of Death.” Dean snorted but Sam continued pointedly, “Average death rate on American roads? Anyone? Anyone?”

“Dude, awesome, channelling the God Ferris.” Sam smirked and they mock high-five’d. 

Castiel turned from one to the other. “Am I supposed to have understood anything you have just said?”

Dean patted him on the leg. “Don’t sweat it, Cas. So, death rate?”

“In America as a whole, on average, fifteen per one hundred thousand vehicles….”

“Yawn.”

“In Arizona, pretty much the same, scaled down.”

“Falling asleep.”

“On a four mile stretch of highway between East Fork and Blackwater, there were over one hundred deaths last month. That’s more than the whole of Alaska for a year, Dean. It’s phenomenal.”

“Yeah, well, Alaska…. Cops got any theories? Dangerous roads do exist… badly planned, poor maintenance, bad lighting maybe?”

“Could be. Could explain some of the accidents, I guess, but Dean, it’s Arizona! It’s desert, straight. Pretty easy driving.”

“Driving too fast? What about all those skittery little critters that leap out at you in deserts? Death by cottontail?”

“You are so not funny.” 

“Bitch.”

“Jerk. And it’s not just the accidents, it’s the….” He swivelled the laptop around, and Dean leaned forward and whistled. 

“Holy…. What the hell did that?”

Castiel tore his gaze away from Dean’s profile and looked at the picture. It was a car. Sort of. It was the essence of car, spread, vaporised, annihilated. Dean turned to him. “Any ideas, freaky new ideas-guy?”

Castiel laughed softly. “No. I have no idea at all. But I was just thinking how unfortunate it would be to see an Impala in such a state.” He looked pointedly at the brothers. Dean leaned back on his arms and whispered, “Jesus,” and Cas did not have the heart to chastise him.


	16. Chapter 16

As Sam continued his research, and Dean was flicking through the flyers in the room looking for a good place to order food, Castiel stood in his habitual place at the window, staring outside. Although to all intents and purposes nothing much had changed in this since the last time they were together in a motel room, Dean was only too aware of the immense changes that actually had occurred. No longer was the angel still and focused, thoughts veiled, purpose concealed. Now the man was restless, leaning his head on the glass, thrusting hands in his pockets, taking them out and running them through his hair. He had even begun the annoying habit of worrying at the scars on his hand, tracing them absently with his thumb, stretching and fisting. “What do you want, buddy? Pizza?” and for the first time ever, Castiel actually thought about food, scrunched up his nose and shook his head. Dean turned away and buried his expression in the menus. Such a small gesture, such momentous change.

Sammy took the bed because he was driving the next day and needed his sleep. Dean threw a few blankets on the floor, and he and Castiel lay down between the bed and wall, inches apart.

After a while, concentrating on the hum of the air conditioner, Dean heard the soft sound of Sam’s breathing in sleep. He sighed and turned onto his back. He felt Castiel turn his head to watch him. “This is most uncomfortable.”

Dean chuckled softly so as not to wake his brother. “Never slept on the floor before, huh?”

“I am only in my second month of sleeping. So, no. At this moment I am missing the nights when I would sit and watch you sleep.”

“You tired?”

“I am. But….” He turned onto his belly with an annoyed huff. “I am _not_ at the same time. It is most frustrating. I feel as if I want to run somewhere. Arizona perhaps.”

“Yep. Eight hours in a car will do that to you. Jeez, Cas, you should’a seen Sammy when he was a kid after a long drive. He had to be brought down off the walls. Me, see, I was the quiet, intellectual type.”

“What happened to you?”

“Funny. Nah, I always found _other_ outlets for my energy.”

“I believe I saw small air quotes there.”

“You know,” his eyes flicked quickly further down Cas’s body, “that’s gonna be something you’re gonna have to work out soon, buddy. Now you’re all… juiced up. But, hey, you know… don’t… just cus you don’t understand something, yeah? Lotta women out there would eat you up and spit you out for breakfast. It’s something guys learn, yeah? You’re kinda on a tighter schedule. Catching up. But you’ll get there. Only… I want you to ask if you don’t… hey, like your new army buddy, right? You asked me and I set you right. That was good, yeah? You can ask me anything, kinda maybe run things past me before you try them?”

Castiel thought about Dean’s incoherent mumble for a while then pushed up on his folded arms, his back a pure curve in the blue-black moonlight. He tentatively reached out his hand. “Can I… touch your face?”

“Huh! Kinda weird there, Cas. But, okay, sure. Why?”

Castiel closed his eyes as if what he was going to say was too difficult to look at when made tangible between them. “I touched you once with my Father’s love, which I channelled through my grace to rebuild you. To be allowed such a thing was beyond my expectation. It was an act only one step below the original creation. I _recreated_ you. But at that time I was energy, light, thought… love. Now I am….” He held up his fingers, despairingly. Despite all the languages he knew, he could find no words to interpret his feelings. 

Dean nudged him with his shoulder. “Hey, Cas, just fricking touch me, okay? It’s all good.” He wasn’t sure what he was expecting. Perhaps two fingers to his forehead, reminiscent of Castiel’s angelic touches of the past. He was not prepared for the angel’s whole hand to press lightly over his eyes, fingers spread, stroking and exploring. He should have known. He smiled. “You shaving me now, buddy?” Castiel did not reply, merely moved his hand, palm soft over Dean’s lips, silencing him. Then he brushed the pad of his thumb down over Dean’s lower lip, parting it from the one above. Dean swallowed, and Cas ran the thumb lightly over Dean’s bottom teeth, his eyes wide with the intensity of the soft exploration. 

He moved his whole hand over and around Dean’s jaw, slowly, so the stubble rasped, tickling his palm. In his mind, he was stroking him once more with his heavenly grace, remoulding, reforming, _his_ intense life force passing life back into the corrupted flesh. But _now_ it was flesh upon flesh, and his hand was warm, tingling on male stubble. He plunged his fingers into Dean’s short hair, softer than the stubble; moved his fingers over an ear, across closed eyes. He could feel the flutter of eyelashes against his palm. One finger stroked over each closed lid; such trust. He had taken the colour of vibrant spring leaves in heaven and infused that colour back into these eyes, watching them lose their milky gaze of death, and glow once more through the power of his Father’s love. Through the command of _his_ love. He gently prised them open, one after the other, and Dean stared up at him, holding his gaze, as with a small hiss of pleasure Castiel returned his hand to the welcoming lips. Dean opened his mouth and licked across Castiel’s palm. The angel’s eyes widened, and he pulled his hand away for a moment, then moved closer, pushing a finger against the soft pout. Dean opened his mouth and let the finger slide over his lips, flicking the end of his tongue against it. Castiel withdrew and stared at the glistening tip for a moment before trailing it across his own lips. Dean tipped his head back, pressing into his folded arms and groaned softly. There would be no beer. No seducing Castiel for a casual kiss. His plans crumbled under the exploring fingers and scattered, small dusts motes, in the cool streaks of light illuminating the angel’s skin. There was nothing casual about any of this, and he whispered with a slight hitch to his voice, “I’m kinda…. You done?”

Castiel put his hand on Dean’s cheek staring at the parted lips. He was frowning deeply, concentrating, as if there was something else he wanted, but could not translate this need into action. Dean freed an arm. He slid it behind Cas’s head and pulled him down. With a soft, “Night, buddy,” he kissed Castiel’s forehead, a long, full kiss of a father to a child, and then turned on his side, back to Castiel, and pretended to fall asleep. 

For the first time that night, lying awake alongside Dean’s warm body, Castiel made the connection between arousal and desire. There was nothing pure or angelic in his mind then as he endured an erection he could not touch. In his imagination, he forced Dean’s kiss from his forehead to his mouth and held the lips there with his hands buried in Dean’s hair, gripping him with all the strength and conviction he had once gripped him in hell. All his passion rose like a great beast woken from hibernation. He rolled once more in dirt and oil and forced Dean down beneath him - but he wasn’t playing this time. He touched the man with eager, exploring hands - but not on his face. He used his strength and speed to outmanoeuvre Dean - but not on a hunt. It was a revelation as great as the one when he had first beheld Dean’s body newly risen and glowing from his imparted love. 

After ten minutes Dean felt a sudden movement behind him as Castiel stood, kicking off his light coverings. He stepped over Dean and went into the bathroom, shutting the door. Sam woke and sat up, hand reaching for his gun. Dean put a hand up and stilled him. “S’okay. Go back to sleep.”

“You want the bed now?”

Dean hesitated then nodded. They swapped, and when Castiel retuned sometime later he found the long, thin body of Sam asleep on the floor beside him. He was grateful and lay down beside him to pass the night watching dust motes caught in the unearthly beauty of the moon.


	17. Chapter 17

Dean woke when Sam ripped his covers off and bounced hard on the side of the bed. He groaned and sat up, rubbing his face. A hard floor, an almost equally uncomfortable bed, and Castiel, had not made an easy combination for sleep. He peered over onto the floor. “Where’s Cas?”

Sam shrugged. “He was gone when I woke up. Guess he went for a walk maybe?”

“A walk where, Sammy? Jeez, you let him just wander off… after...?”

“After what? And I was asleep, Dean!”

Dean threw on his shirt and jeans, hopping as he pulled on sneakers and ripped open the door. With a stagger of relief, he saw Castiel, leaning against the car, arms crossed against his chest against the cool morning air. Dean blew on his fingers and walked closer. “Sammy was worried, Cas. Don’t just leave like that, okay?”

Castiel nodded. 

“You okay?”

“I have been thinking.”

“About breakfast?”

Castiel frowned. “No, I was not thinking about food.”

Dean punched his arm and yelled for Sam. “Diner ‘cross the road looks okay. Think later, yeah?”

Castiel closed his eyes and sighed. “No, Dean, I need to talk with you now. I have decided that I have to….”

“NO!” His vehemence made Castiel look up sharply. Dean glanced back at Sam and said brusquely. “Go fuel the car, Sammy. We’ll meet you in the diner.” Sam looked between them for a moment then nodded reluctantly, caught the tossed keys and opened the driver’s door. Dean seized Castiel’s arm and pulled him back inside the room and kicked the door close. “I don’t want to know, Cas. You are not going to tell me that you are leaving. You are _not_ leaving, do you hear me?”

“Dean, I have to go! I will destroy you if I stay.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Is this sideswipe Dean Winchester fucking day, cus where the hell has this come from?”

Castiel suddenly caught Dean’s arms and pushed him against the wall. “You are the Righteous Man, Dean. You were chosen by God! I have fallen so far now that what I want, what I _need_ , will corrupt you.”

Dean pushed back, hard, and they stood toe to toe. “Who the hell are you to tell me what I want or need? I wanted my mom not to die, Cas, but I sure as hell didn’t get that. I needed my dad to put me and Sammy first just once in his Goddamned life, but I didn’t get that either. I need what I have _now_. I need Sam, and I need you! I need _you_!”

“You don’t need me like _this_ , Dean! I have changed. I am not what you think I am. I do not know what I am myself anymore. I am entirely lost, and the only way I see to go is to go away from you. To _protect_ you.”

“I don’t want you to protect me, Cas! I don’t need you to protect me. I need you here, by my side.”

“But how, Dean? I am not your brother, and I do not know how we are to do this thing. Together. You and me. I have needs as well. I am a man now, and _I need as well_.”

Dean rubbed his hands over his face and nodded. “I know. I know, buddy, I kinda saw that last night.”

“Oh.” There was nothing else to say. Castiel collapsed onto the end of the bed, defeated, his face in his hands. Dean tipped his head back and cursed the heavens silently then went over and wrapped his arms around the lowered head. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay, and you know why? Because it’s you and me, and it’s been fucked up and weird for us every single day we’ve known each other, but we’ve always come through, yeah?”

“I believe this is worse than raising you from hell or falling from heaven.”

“What, loving adorable me is worse than storming the gates of hell?”

“Far worse. At least in hell there was an end in sight.”

“You telling me you’d rather fall from heaven than fall in love with me?”

“Yes. Falling from heaven was only agonising and terrifying and left me bewildered and lost. This has also got you rubbing my hair annoyingly.”

Dean laughed and sat on the bed beside him and nudged him fondly with his arm. “Hey, come on. You’re not the only one confused and freaked out here. Hey, for the last three weeks, I’ve been trying to work out how to get you to kiss me.”

There was a fairly prolonged silence after this until Castiel, head still lowered, asked carefully, “Three weeks?”

Perhaps if Dean had a sister, or perhaps had known his mother for more than four years of his life, or indeed were married, he might have heard something in the tone of that simple _three weeks_ that would have given him pause - made him realise his error and retreat swiftly to a place of greater safety. However, he just ruffled Cas’s hair in an affectionate, comrade-in-arms, manner. Castiel jerked his head away. “You have thought about me like… that… for three weeks but have only told me now. I thought this _last night_ and told you this morning.”

Dean shot to his feet. “Hey, big difference, Dude. I’m talking a guy-to-guy kiss here. Like going out for a beer, or… or… sharing a chick, yeah? Going to a ballgame together.”

Castiel rose as well, an expression of incredulous disbelief on his face. “When you told me to sleep in Sam’s room! You were thinking of kissing me! You told me to leave the bedroom because you were…. Dean!”

Dean was leaving. Out the door, heading for the diner.

Castiel followed, close on his heels, his epiphanies swift and increasing. “When you hugged me. You were hard, and you were thinking about _kissing_ me.”

“For fuck’s sake, Dude, shut up. Public highway here!”

Dean reached the safety of the diner. No Impala yet. He wrenched open the door with the air of a desperate man and searched wildly for an empty seat in the crowded room. He sensed Castiel come in behind him. The waitress approached with a practised smile of welcome. She opened her mouth to speak but the voice came from behind him. “You fucked a stripper with an inappropriate body piercing because you wanted to kiss _me_!” The whole room fell silent. The waitress looked at Dean for a moment then asked brightly, “Table for one?”

Dean turned on his heel and came face to face with Castiel who was, as usual, up close and personal. Glaring. Sam came into the diner jigging keys in his hand. Without taking his eyes from Castiel, Dean held out his hand, a silent yet unmistakable gesture. Sam read the gesture and the mood with one swift glance between the two men, handed over the keys, turned around and preceded them out.

They reached the car at the same time. Dean unlocked, but before he climbed in he said deceptively calmly to Sam, “Cas is gonna leave, Sammy. He needs some space, see more human life than he’s gonna see with us. I’m cool with it.”

Castiel was taking off his jacket before climbing into the backseat. He narrowed his eyes fractionally. “I believe I have changed my mind, Sam. I am seeing a very interesting example of human life being part of this team.” And he climbed in and shut the door on further protest.

 

Dean couldn’t start any day without food, even one that had started as badly as this one, so despite his almost ungovernable rage and utter humiliation he pulled in at another diner half an hour later. The atmosphere in the car was interesting and didn’t become less so at their small table. Dean stared out at the room, Castiel in the opposite direction through the window, and Sam was left to order and talk to himself whilst they ate. Eventually, as it was his day for driving, he took the keys and headed out to the car leaving Dean to pay. As he was standing tapping his stolen credit card impatiently against his leg, Dean felt his cell phone buzz. He pulled it out to find he had a text from Sam. It read simply _txt me wen yor shit is dn_. He looked up, confused, to see the Impala leaving the parking lot with a screech of tyres. Castiel had seen the car leaving as well and went out to the lot, watching it drive away. Dean followed, and after a minute of embarrassing silence said, “We need to focus on this case for now. We put this shit aside until after Arizona. Agreed?”

Castiel pushed his hands into his pockets and nodded. “But I apologise for the stripper comment. It was louder than I intended.”

Dean glanced over, a range of emotions contorting his features, and then he began to laugh. Castiel shook his head despairingly. “I do not understand what we have actually been arguing about.”

“After Arizona we talk. Okay?”

“I believe you said that in Fort Elizabeth.”

“And I’ve told you not to listen to a word I fricking say.”

Castiel gave him a swift look. “Some of the things you say are more… intriguing… than others.” His eyes flicked briefly to Dean’s lips then moved slowly up, holding his gaze. They were so lost in the stare that Dean did not hear a familiar low engine growl behind him and was not aware that Sam had returned until he heard his brother’s voice. “Dean. You done?”

Dean grinned, still holding Castiel’s gaze. “Yeah. All good here, Sam.”

“Cas?”

Castiel allowed Dean a small smile and agreed, “Thank you, Sam. I believe I am good as well.”

The rest of the trip to Arizona passed in a blur. Dean decided that he and Sam would take turns driving, no stopping except for food and fuel, and mile by mile they ate up the distance until on a quiet morning they reached the town limits of Blackwater, Arizona, one end of the alleged highway of death. It was pretty unremarkable. A gas station with attached diner and motel and then nothing… just a long, straight road to East Fork, four miles away. But on those four miles, one hundred and five souls had passed beyond life, crushed and burned so intensely that little of their remains had survived for forensic analysis. No survivors, no witnesses, no mercy.

They parked up at the gas station and walked a little way onto the highway. Dean squinted in the intense sun. ”Any timeline on these deaths?”

“Without witnesses it’s hard to say, but all the remains were found early morning, so I’m guessing the deaths happened at night.”

Castiel walked over to stand next to Dean. “Could it not be that this is just a badly designed road for night driving? Perhaps there is a simple explanation for these deaths.”

“Sam, you go visit the coroner, Cas an’ I’ll go speak DOT to the locals.” 

“You wanna book into this motel?”

“Sure. Why not? Scene of the crime an’ all.” 

As they were only a few miles from Grand Buttes, one of the State’s most visited attractions, the motel catered for families. Out of season, they were able to get a small cabin with two bedrooms, a bathroom and kitchen. The brothers automatically took one bedroom, leaving Castiel alone in the other. He did not need to change for his impersonation of an agent from the Department of Transport so he waited patiently for Dean, content to watch the play of light on the desert as the sun rose. He could not ever remember visiting Arizona when he had been little different to a beam of light. Perhaps his garrison had fought there once. Perhaps he had walked and talked with the land’s ancient inhabitants. He could not remember. He heard Dean come in through the bathroom, which connected the two bedrooms. “Ready? What’s wrong?”

“This place makes me feel insignificant.”

Dean came closer and stood with him at the window. “I’d say awesome rocks, but we’d kinda mean the same.”

Castiel smiled. Dean took a breath and said, “So, just us.”

“Yes. I had noticed that myself.”

“I… dammit….” Dean snagged Castiel behind his head and pulled him closer and kissed him, swift and awkward and quickly released. “There. It’s done. Three days in the car, and I fucking couldn’t wait any longer.” He ripped open the door and stomped off. 

Castiel followed Dean to the car and took his accustomed seat in the back. He lifted his eyes to find Dean watching him, an anxious expression etched on his face. Very slowly and carefully, with the implicit love Dean had only ever been given from his brother, the angel flipped him off. 

They dropped Sam off at the rear entrance to the medical examiner’s office in Blackwater and drove on towards the small local branch of the Department of Transportation. As soon as Sam exited the car, Castiel swapped places and rode up front with Dean. Dean kept casting him glances as he manoeuvred through the light early morning traffic. Castiel pretended to ignore him and thus, happily occupied, they arrived at a small adobe building bravely flying the flag and offering one space for visitors. “Okay, Agent English… you got your story straight?”

“I believe so. We are from the State Highways and Vehicle….”

“Ve-hic-u-lar, Cas. You’ve gotta get the lingo.”

“But….”

“Never mind. Let’s roll. What?”

“Are you going to tell Sam?”

“Jesus, Cas, you pick your moments.”

“Don’t blaspheme. Are you?”

“Tell him what?”

“That….”

“Yeah. Exactly. What. ‘Sides, I think he’s kinda worked out something weird is going on.”

“Something weird is always going on between us, Dean.”

“Trust me, Dude, not as weird as this.”

“If we….”

“Look, Cas, I’d rather have this conversation like never, but if we’re having it, it’s not here and now.”

“If we… progress… then….”

“Hey, buddy, listen up. There is no progress, okay? I kissed you… I admit it….”

“You can hardly deny it to me as I was there.”

“I’m not fricking denying it! But, look, I’m a guy, Cas. You think that makes us the same, but it doesn’t. I’m… fuck… I’m like these damn rock formations: I’ve never been anything else, yeah? I can’t be a fucking river. You flitted about being light and shit and water, and then decided you’d look like a rock for a while. We don’t think the same.”

“Am I supposed to understand anything from what you have just said?”

Dean twisted in his seat. “Understand this, Cas. I’m a guy. I don’t fuck other guys. Now get out of the fucking car and let’s go pretend we’re fucking professionals on a fucking job solving a shit load of deaths and stop making me fucking think about this!”

As they were walking to the entrance, Castiel said evenly, “I have never flitted and you should learn to curb your profanity.”


	18. Chapter 18

Agents English and Riordan were shown to a tiny office at the rear of the building where the Chief of the Highways Administration had his appointment proudly announced on a handwritten sign tacked to the door. Castiel frowned for a moment, Dean murmured cakehole and knocked, entering when they heard a weary, “Yeah.”

The Chief looked up from his desk. “You got an appointment?”

They flashed their badges too quickly for close inspection and took a seat facing him. He was small and tanned and weathered with lines of exhaustion etching his face. “I’m guessing you gents are here about our little happy highway.”

“Lotta accidents, Chief.”

“And that’s what they were, son, far as we can tell.”

“No witnesses?”

“Not a one, but it’s an old piece of road, not much traffic on it now. Army base closed couple months ago, and you wanna get to the monuments you take the fork outta Blackwater and the new highway.”

Castiel leant forward. “Perhaps the old road is lonely. Perhaps….”

“Okay, what my partner meant to say is, is there any pattern to the timings? Anything unusual?”

“No, I did not mean that, I meant that the road may have a sense of being abandoned and be wanting to….”

“Chief? Timings?”

“You maybe want some coffee or something? Sounds as if you boys got up a mite too early this mornin’.” He rose and stuck his head out of the office, shouting for someone called Minks to rustle up some coffee. Dean took the opportunity to kick Castiel and mime the zipping of his mouth. Castiel looked annoyed and turned his face to look at something on the wall.

Over coffee the Chief confirmed what Sam had told them that the accidents had all occurred early morning or at night. He had no other explanation. He pulled out a file and showed them the photos of the remains, some they had already seen, although it was hard to tell one catastrophic wreck from another. 

“Do these look normal to you, Chief? If it was one or two say?”

“Nothing normal about them, Agent, even if it was only one. My guys reckoned they were doing average speeds for a good straight piece of empty road, maybe sixty? Some more, some less, but to get a wreck like that, they had to have hit something head on. No warning, no sign of breaking at all. Not a tyre mark on the road, no sign of wear to the brake pads. Nada.”

“They hit something? But there’s only….”

“Well, yeah, there is that. One vehicle per accident, and no damn trace of any other material in the wrecks. They hit something head on, but I have no damn idea what. You gonna put that in your report?”

“Were the wrecks spread out?”

“Nope. All in about maybe quarter of a mile? Maybe less.”

“Why hasn’t the road been closed, I mean, shit, Chief, this is a lotta people dying here.”

“Can’t, son. Only road between here and East Fork till we get that new highway spur completed. Soon as it is, this road’s going down, trust me.”

“You been out to the site yourself?”

“Sure have. Number of times. Didn’t go much over ten miles an hour, I’m telling you that for free.”

“None of your guys saw anything when they investigated?”

“What are you thinking? Big wall or something miraculously springing up from the roadway? Maybe one of our nice big rocks moving and tiptoeing over to sit himself….”

“That actually sounds like a very good theory….”

The Chief regarded Castiel for a moment then returned his focus to Dean. “Sense of humour your partner. I like it. Look we’ve had every nutcase out there on damn blogs and facewhatnots coming up with every damn conspiracy theory you can think of. One wedgehead reckoned it was a UFO trying to land and these poor souls kept hitting it. I’ve had crop circles, alien abductions from Roswell escapees. I even had one freak who claimed he’d seen Lucifer himself descending.”

“That would be impossible because….”

“Okay, Chief, I think we’ve got everything we need for now. You got any objections if me and my partner take a drive out there and look around?”

“Be my guest. I’d recommend you keep your speed down. And maybe wear your seatbelts up tight an’ personal.” He turned to Castiel. “You find that walking rock, son, you tell him to piss off my damn highway.”

Dean left the car occupying the one visitors’ slot and began to walk toward the main street. “We’ll meet up with Sam and eat.”

“Am I never going to be allowed to speak when we are on a case?”

“Oh, sure, Cas, when the continents realign. But I liked your lonely road. Poor little baby-bud-asphalt cryin’ for his….” He got punch on the arm. “An’ the rock walkin’ was cool too.”

“You are implying I have no use at all.”

“Your job is to sit there and look pretty.” He stopped abruptly, appeared to have some internal dialogue then shrugged. “I guess I can tell you that. Don’t alter the fact I’m still a guy.”

Castiel was glancing at Dean’s profile as they walked, and after a moment’s reflection commented, “Humans are very concerned with gender and the outward manifestation of it.”

Dean gave him a bitchface. “Damn right we are. First thing we open our eyes and see: pink or blue, and fuck you if you prefer the other one.”

“That is not the case for everyone.”

“It is for me, and that’s who this little chick flick talk is concerning. Or are we talking about you, Cas?”

Cas took a while to reply but eventually responded with an angry gesture. “It was more a case of overcoming an ingrained species taboo. You are, were, another species, a lower order of my Father’s creation and forbidden to us. It would be like you being attracted to an amusing meerkat.” On that note he turned and pushed into a café, letting the door shut in Dean’s face.

They sat at a table in the shaded courtyard under an awing. It was not Dean’s kind of place, but it served coffee and food and Sammy loved it. It was French and catered to tourists with deep wallets and expensive tastes, but Dean was happy to see his brother happy, and that’s all that counted. That Castiel also seemed fascinated by the menu and décor was irrelevant as far as Dean was concerned. He hadn’t entirely understood the meerkat reference but he was fairly sure it wasn’t a compliment. But he was inclined to cut the guy some slack. Dean was confusing _himself_ with his almost constant fixation on the angel, so he got that Castiel was confused and angry. Even now, brow furrowed over the menu, one thumb worrying at the scar across his palm, tie askew, Dean could not take his eyes off him. And he’d just told the guy he though he was pretty. When Castiel looked up at the waiter’s approach and ordered for them all in fluent French Dean actually groaned. He was not so impressed, however, when the waiter stayed at the table and had a long and entirely incomprehensible conversation with Cas over his head. He made a face at Sammy and a gesture to his gun, which made his brother laugh. 

When the waiter went to get their order Sam nudged Castiel and said, “I think you’ve just made a new… friend.”

“Cas prefers his army buddies, don’t you, Cas?”

Castiel gave him a look. “Do you want to know what he said?”

“Oh, I’ve got a pretty good idea what he was saying to you, Dude. Don’t need to speak the lingo to speak _that_ language.”

“What are you talking about, Dean? As usual you are making no sense, and I think I have switched back to English. Yes, I have. He was telling me about the suicides at the army base. Before it closed. Just before the first accident, I believe.”

Sammy leant forward eagerly, saving Dean from having to make an apology, but Dean didn’t miss the slightly amused raised eyebrow from Cas before he started to relate to Sam what he had been told. Before he’d thought it through, Dean eased his foot over and kicked Castiel lightly on the ankle. The angel kept his face straight, but Dean saw a finger being raised along the side of the menu. Nice. 

That he was flirting with Castiel crossed his mind. But he sometimes did things like this with Sammy. Or had, when they were younger and their lives less complex. Perhaps that was what he really wanted from Castiel: another brother. A younger, more innocent one, one he could still ruffle messy morning hair with, one he could kiss with an affectionate brotherly benediction. Someone who needed him. Shit, he was a sad bastard. Perhaps he just needed a damn wife and some fricking kids.

“What do you think, Dean?”

“Huh?” He looked over at the other two. Castiel leant back with an amused smirk.

“Yes, I would like to hear Dean’s thoughts on this new theory as well. Or do you need me to repeat it all?” He flicked up his eyebrows knowing full well that Dean had not heard a word they had said.

The coffee and pastries arrived so Dean was saved from replying. The waiter remained this time as well, because as soon as he’d deposited the food, Castiel engaged him in another long conversation, and there was no doubt in either brother’s mind that this was not about suicide or anything unpleasant. The waiter began to blush and smile, and after a while he ripped off a page of his pad, jotted something down and handed it to Castiel. Dean saw it was a telephone number. Castiel slipped the number into his pocket and began to drink his coffee. 

Dean wasn’t going to ask but was saved from doing so anyway as Sammy began to tell him the gist of the conversation he’d missed: a closed army base; half a dozen suspected suicides, all soldiers at the base who had driven their cars into the desert and set themselves on fire, strapped in and burning to death within their vehicles. It was a gruesome story. They agreed that Sammy would return to the medical examiner’s office - something he seemed more than eager to do, and something Dean suspected was linked to the fact that he was calling the ME Jennifer and mentioning her name as often as he could - and that he and Castiel would visit the road. Dean was just in the mood to take the smug bastard to the Highway of Death.

They walked back to the car, which now had a ticket on the screen. “Yeah.” Dean screwed it up; they climbed in and began to drive back to the motel. Dean pulled into the lot and went toward their cabin, Castiel trailing behind. “Change, yeah? Don’t need suits and shit in the desert. Don’t know what we’re gonna find.”

“I’ll tell you if you ask me.”

“Not gonna ask, so go get your shit together, and I’ll meet you back at the car.”

Castiel went into his room; Dean went into his and slammed the door between them. When they came back to the car, Castiel was dressed in jeans, T-shirt and boots, and looked ready to work. Dean said he’d left something in his room and went back in. Castiel’s jacket pocket was empty. He kicked the end of the bed in anger and exited the cabin through his own room and returned to the car. In Sam’s absence, Castiel always rode shotgun, and he sat alongside Dean with his bare arm trailing out of the window in the hot sun, letting Casper get as much sun as possible. After a small sigh he said, “I did not realise my instructions never to speak to anyone applied off the case as well.”

“It applies to whoever I want it to apply to, and I’m not talking about this. Drivin’ on the Highway of Death here?”

“Then I am to remain entirely tied to you and yet you do not want me. That will prove to be an interesting existence. Here. Take it.” He passed Dean the torn off piece of paper the waiter had given him.

“I don’t fucking want pretty-boy’s number! I’m a guy, Castiel, remember?”

“As you keep reminding me of that fact – one I’ll remind you I don’t need reminding of as I rebuilt you – every _inch_ , Dean – yes, I do remember. This is his grandmother’s telephone number. She is from the old country and has not spoken with anyone from there in her own language for many years. He asked me if I would visit her, and I said I would. Does that appease you enough for you to speak to me again and stop giving me bitchfaces to rival your little brother?”

“I don’t know. Pretty boy gonna be there when you visit?”

Castiel laughed, a genuine, human laugh that Dean had not heard before. He glanced over to see that he had been forgiven, and he poked Castiel in the leg. “So, shall we go find your moving rocks?”

“If you promise we will not crash head on into them, then yes.” It was a sobering thought, and Dean lowered his speed fractionally, then some more, and then once more until they were moving barely above thirty miles an hour. It was agonisingly slow for both Dean and Baby, and with the heat rising from the road Dean began to sweat in nervous anticipation. Both he and Castiel winced when a car came up behind them and overtook, horn blaring and flashing lights. Doing thirty on a long straight highway in the middle of the desert on a bright, cloudless day did not endear them to the other driver. 

After a mile or so they came across the scene of the accidents, a two hundred yard stretch where the cars had imploded scattering burning fragments in a wide arc to both sides of the road. They pulled over and walked around for a while. Almost all the debris had been collected between the ME’s office and the DOT, but enough fragments were left to see the scale of the disasters. “You getting anything, here, Cas?”

Castiel was standing with his arms folded tightly over his chest. “This is a terrible place.”

“You sense demons? Anything?”

“I do not believe I can sense in that way now, Dean. I only feel a terrible after-impression of death. I suppose it is some mercy that they died instantly and with no pain.”

“Huh. Yeah, but the army guys didn’t…. You think it’s related? Suicides, then these so-called accidents?”

“Yes. Perhaps we should visit the army base, even though it is closed we might find something useful. I would like to leave here, anyway.”

Dean walked over to him and put an arm over his shoulder. “Sure. Let’s go. Visit your army buddies….” Cas shook his arm off but was smiling. 

“Shit, it’s hot.”

“It’s the desert, Dean. It’s supposed to be hot.”

“Won’t be when we come back tonight though. I’m thinking layers, blankets and hot coffee.”

Castiel looked alarmed as they got back into the car. “We are coming back here tonight? I think that sounds like a horrible idea.”

“We’re not gonna drive on the road. We’re gonna park up and stake it out, watch, see what happens.”

“That is still a horrible idea!”

“What’s up, buddy? Nothing worries you. Why this car thing got your feathers all ruffled?”

Cas ran his fingers through his hair, which it really didn’t need. “Imagine being asleep in the car, Dean, as we do when you are driving, and then… nothing. I find it difficult to sleep knowing I am going to wake in another place, but to fall asleep and then… cease to exist without knowing.” He visibly shuddered and turned his face away. 

“You okay?”

“I had little imagination when I was an angel; now I find I have too much. It is disconcerting, that is all. Let’s go and see this army base, as you suggest. But, please, drive _very_ slowly.”

According to the sign still proudly mounted on the gate, the base had been the home of the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division. It had been officially closed only a month before, but this after a long rundown programme following on from the reduction in troop numbers and replacement and updating of their fighting vehicles. The gate was locked, and there wasn’t much to see except empty hangers and the usual range of administrative buildings. Dean stood in the hot sun, leaning on the roof of the Imapla watching Castiel as he tried the lock on the gate. With a tiny smirk he murmured, “So, you want to play army with me, Cas?”

Castiel turned. He caught Dean’s meaning and shook his head fondly. Then added in an undertone as he turned back to the gate, “However, I’m intrigued to think what you would do if I said… yes.”

Dean spluttered slightly then walked over and kicked the gate. “Let’s go. We need the laptop, see what this place was about. You ready?” As they were driving away, Castiel suddenly asked him to stop, and he climbed out to inspect something alongside the road: a small marker with one of the names of the six soldiers who had died. 

“I wonder who put this here?” The little metal plaque glinted in the sun. Some desiccated flowers, remains of a long-dead tribute, lay abandoned. “Is there a worse death, Dean, than that of death by fire? And to strap yourself into a car and set yourself….”

“Hey, pal, it’s okay. Baby’s gonna think you don’t love her if you get all angsty ‘bout this case.”

Castiel glanced back at the car and shivered again. Dean frowned. “Seriously, Dude, it’s like a hundred and forty out here. Someone walk over your grave?”

Castiel’s eyes flew wide. “What? What does that mean?”

“Jesus, calm down. It’s just an expression. It’s like… I don’t know… déjà vu or something. You know what that is, right? It means you kinda sense… someone walking on your grave. I guess. I don’t know!”

“Your explanations are always enlightening, Dean. I shall ask Sam. I really don’t like this place. I like it less than I did at the crash site. Can we please go back?”

They drove – slowly – back along the highway to the motel. Sam had not yet returned. Castiel went to his room and kicked off his boots. Dean decided to take a shower as the sweat he’d raised driving so slowly, thinking about all the bad things he’s was doing to Baby’s engine, had now stuck to him, and even he could smell it. He went into the bathroom and shut the connecting door to Castiel’s room. 

He swore he could feel grainy sand in the water as he showered, but it was better than nothing, and he wandered back into his own room, towel around his waist, to find Castiel had come around through the outside doors and was now lying on his bed watching TV. He debated making a big deal about needing to get dressed, but it wasn’t that different to finding Sam there, so he sat down on the end of the bed and rummaged in his bag for some clean socks. “What you watching? Porn?”

Castiel huffed. “Of course not.” And then added. “It’s the afternoon.” As if that were relevant. 

Dean chuckled. “Did we eat lunch? I remember pastry, but I don’t remember meat.”

“Shall I order something?”

“You wanna eat here?”

“Yes. I am watching television.” 

Dean wriggled into some shorts, stripped off the towel and pulled on some jeans. He slid up the bed to lie alongside Castiel, back to the headboard. “You okay now?”

Castiel nodded. “Yes, we are not driving along a highway upon which at any moment we will be annihilated and squashed like flies on a windshield. I am feeling much better. Why are you staring at me?”

Dean looked away quickly. After a moment he puffed out his cheeks and said, “So…?”

Castiel turned to him, and suddenly they were face-to-face only inches apart. Dean swallowed audibly. “What would you do if I kissed you again?”

Castiel thought for a moment and replied, “I would wonder how you were fitting that into your avowed _I am a guy_ box, but I would most definitely kiss you back.”

Dean snagged Castiel’s hair and pulled him to his mouth. Cas did indeed kiss back this time, his hands finding the back of Dean’s neck and making the kiss hard, a mash of lips and teeth and the rasp of stubble. Castiel pulled Dean’s face away from his with a painful tug on the short hair and said with a hitch in his breath, “I have not done this before.” Dean wasn’t bothered about speaking or analysis. He’d been thinking about this all day, increasingly so as the heat had risen, Castiel’s hair blowing in the wind from the open window, and his eyes darkening on entering the gloom of the cabin after the bright sun. He was past the thinking stage; he passed that in the shower feeling grains and remembering sand on Castiel’s body as he’d lain beneath him in the dirt of Bobby’s yard. He breathed deeply into Castiel’s mouth, using his tongue to explore, his teeth to nip and hold. For the first time kissing someone, he knew that nothing he did would be too much, unwelcome or painful. He grinned and bit hard into Castiel’s lower lip and found himself pushed back onto the bed, Castiel deepening the kiss with his weight, his strong arms holding Dean pinned down. 

Dean heard a car pull up outside but barely processed the sound. He was thinking about Castiel’s hard arousal, the heat of his body enveloping him. He heard his brother’s voice, paying for the cab. He struggled to be free, but Castiel had heard the voice as well and pulled away quickly, rising and going back through the bathroom to his own room. Sammy came in, balancing his laptop and various notebooks. He looked at Dean, alarmed, “What’s wrong?”

Dean turned over onto his belly, picking up the remote. “Nothing, I was asleep. Good visit with Jennifer?”

Sam grinned and began to relay his afternoon. Dean envied Castiel his own room, pretty sure what the angel was doing. Alone, Dean would have been doing the same. Forcing his mind onto more appropriate paths, he told Sam what they had seen at the crash site and the closed camp.

“It’s Kuwait, Dean - the connection, it has to be. Kuwait 1991. The 25th Infantry were there and were implicated in the killing of hundreds of unarmed civilians on, get this, the Highway of Death.” Dean sat up, easing a pillow onto his lap but able to get a better look at Sam’s screen. 

“Highway of Death. Seriously?”

Sam nodded. “The Iraqis were fleeing the city, thousands of them all bunched up on this stretch of desert road. We bombed the head of the convoy to block them in then we took out the armoured vehicles with air attacks. It went on for, like, ten hours, Dean. It was horrendous. They reckon maybe as many as ten thousand people were killed. Shit, nowhere to run, being bombed and shelled. But look, here, a group of Iraqis had surrendered and thrown away their weapons. Maybe up to four hundred of them and apparently… they tried to flee. And here we go… they were allegedly gunned down by Bradley Fighting Vehicles from the 25th Infantry. Ring a bell?”

Before Dean could reply, he heard Castiel’s voice as he re-entered through the bathroom. “The men who committed suicide were in Kuwait?”

Sam nodded, oblivious to the small glance shared between the other two. Cas sat down on the bed next to Dean so he could see the pictures on the screen. They made grim viewing. Corpses were crammed into smouldering wreckage or slumped face down in the sand where they had apparently tried to flee, hundreds of bodies lying exposed and strewn across the road like morbid confetti. They were torn, shredded, mangled and bloated, almost unrecognisable as human in the blistering desert sun. Men, women and children. “These were the ones that got caught before they could escape. They found hundreds more in the swamps where they’d drowned or just lain down and died of their injuries.”

“They ever have, like, court-martials for these guys? I mean, come on, My Lai? No way could they have murdered four hundred unarmed guys and it just be brushed under the fucking carpet.”

“It couldn’t be proved. Witnesses were unreliable. I guess it was war.” 

Cas nodded sadly at Sam. “Tales of hunting always glorify the hunter.”

“Yeah. These guys won and came home heroes.”

“Except in their own minds. Why the suicides so many years later? I mean, shit, I was only twelve when this happened. That’s hell of a long time to wait to start feeling fricking guilty.”

Castiel spoke directly to Dean for the first time since returning to the room. “Perhaps the closure of the bases, the disbanding of the… I am not sure how to explain what I mean… the camaraderie? The support of fellow colleagues who had been there? Perhaps that shared experience kept them together mentally, but when faced with its loss they….” He shrugged. “Died inside first.”

Dean widened his eyes and looked between Cas and Sam. He nodded slowly. “Don’t ever leave me, guys. Wouldn’t want to face this shit on my own, you know what I mean?” Sam nodded gravely. Castiel hesitated then slid his hand up to Dean’s head and ruffled his hair. It was a carefully calculated brotherly gesture for Sam’s benefit. “I have no intension of going anywhere else.”

Dean felt a weight of something being lifted off his chest. They were good. He grinned. “Anyone hungry?” Sam looked shifty and Dean laughed. “What? Spill, Dude.”

“I kinda said I’d meet Jennifer for dinner?”

“You’ve got a date? Little brother has a date? Way t’ go, Sammy! This gonna be a sock on the knob night?”

Castiel frowned. “Why would Sam put a sock on his….”

“Doorknob, Cas. Doorknob, it means….” And he made an appropriate gesture with his finger poking through a hole. He saw Castiel’s expression and sighed. “Sex, Cas. Sam’s gonna get some tonight.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Ignore him, Cas. It’s just dinner, and you and Dean are welcome to join us.”

Dean shook his head. “Nah, I’m taking Cas on a date tonight.”

Sam raised his eyes, but before he could comment, Castiel said glumly, “Yes, I believe I am being taken to the Highway of Death with a blanket and a mug of coffee.”


	19. Chapter 19

As Dean had predicted, it was freezing in the desert at night. He had driven Baby to a slight rise, which overlooked the road where the accidents had occurred. They had arrived deliberately before the last of the light, but night had fallen fast and hard, and now it was cold, dark and extremely quiet. Castiel was slumped slightly in the passenger seat with his feet up on the dash, his arms wrapped across his chest. He didn’t like this road, and he particularly didn’t like it in freezing desert night temperatures. Dean suffered in silence for a while but then snapped, “Maybe you could channel your inner angel, Dude. Stop fidgeting. What happened to the stoic guy in a trench coat act?”

“He went on a date with a righteous man who thought sitting in a freezing car looking at sand was romantic.”

Dean snorted. “Hey, I brought pizza.”

“It went cold about three hours ago.”

“Still greasy-cheesy though.” He took a bite, just to be annoying. When he’d swallowed, audibly, he said casually, “So….”

“No, Dean! I do _not_ want to kiss you! I’m freezing to death, and you will not let me have a blanket; I am very bored, and you have just chewed a piece of cold pizza with extra garlic.”

“Don’t whine, baby. And we’ll need the blankets later. You never go camping as a kid?”

Castiel turned to him with his most derisive expression. “Camping? Angels do not camp.”

“Well, there you go. You need to listen to someone who knows these things. When it’s really cold, I’ll let you have a blanket.”

“Thank you. I shall hold my breath in expectation.”

“I spy with my….”

“Shut up, Dean. Although I would be fascinated to find out what you could possibly choose to spy given there is nothing to look at but sand.”

“There’s you….”

Castiel turned his head and caught Dean’s gaze. “I’m still not kissing you.”

Dean leaned closer, and to support himself, put his hand on Castiel’s lap. “You sure about that?”

Castiel swallowed and flicked a glance to Dean’s lips. Dean licked them. Castiel groaned. “I…” but whatever he wanted to say was lost upon the soft press of Dean’s lips. He could feel Dean’s smile of triumph as he licked his cold lips with a warm tongue. Dean pulled away. “I’m not sure I’m feeling the love here….” Castiel seized Dean’s face and ground his mouth to the grinning one. He put one cold hand to Dean’s collarbone and then further, pushing it under Dean’s shirt to the warmth of his shoulder. Dean moaned, but the soft sound was lost to a vast explosion of light and sound and Baby rocking softly on the aftermath of lives being vaporised in the cold night air. They staggered in shock from the car, watching the remains of what had once been a family station wagon falling through the dark night, tiny fireflies of grief. 

“Stay back!” Dean followed Cas who was running toward the wreck.

“Did you see anything?”

Dean swore vocally and loudly. “No.” He had been too busy kissing Castiel, and they had made a bad, bad error. Castiel appeared to think the same. He gave Dean a despairing look as the largest piece of the car finished rolling across the sand and came to a burning, hissing stop at the bottom of the rise. They approached it warily. Hardly more than an engine block, it was not much to show for the life of a family taking a vacation to the Arizona monuments. 

“Son of a fucking bitch.” Castiel appeared to agree with Dean’s view as he bent to pick up a fragment of something unrecognisable and dropped it with a hiss as it burnt his fingers. “Did you see anything, Cas? What the fuck did they hit?”

Castiel suddenly kicked furiously at the sand. “I saw nothing. I only saw you, Dean, as I only ever do! This is appalling. We let these people….”

“Hey, calm down, Buddy. We did wrong, but we couldn’t have stopped this.” He put an arm around Castiel’s shoulder and hugged him closer. 

Castiel turned into the hug with a despairing, “Where were the angels, Dean? How can something so malevolent be allowed to exist?”

Dean pulled him into a full hug, chest to chest, his arms tight and determined. “It won’t be, Cas. I promise you that. _We_ won’t let it. Come on, we need to get out of here before anyone shows up.”

They returned to the motel, and to Dean’s disgust, they did find a sock, his, placed prominently on his bedroom door. He gave Castiel a look, and Cas just stood back and let him precede him into his room. Cas gave a glance towards Dean’s room, but Dean shook his head. “You’re gonna have to learn to kinda not think about it? Takes practise, but, ya know….”

Castiel sat heavily on the end of the bed and put his head into his hands. “I heard something.”

“Huh?”

“Before the… explosion. When we were… When I was… I heard something I have never heard before, and I do not know what it was.”

“What did it sound like?”

Castiel scrunched up his face, thinking. He sighed. “I have no reference points for this. It was like… hell? Like screaming? Like… the end of the world. I’m sorry, I can not make more sense of it.”

Dean sat down beside him. “Tomorrow night, Cas, we go back out and we gank this fucker. Okay?”

Castiel smiled wanly. “Yes. As you say: we gank the fucker.”

Dean ruffled his hair, just because he could, and looked around the room. “Guess we’re sharing.”

Castiel began to unlace his boots and glanced once more toward the door to the adjoining room. 

“Stop it.”

“It is hard not to think about it. I wonder what they are doing….”

“Hey, seriously, Dude, that’s my brother!” He pulled off his jeans and climbed under the blankets. Castiel eyed him warily. 

“Am I the only one seeing an awkward situation here?”

“Nope.”

“Oh.”

“Climb in and stop being a bitch.”

Castiel pulled off his jeans and obeyed. They lay side by side for a while, both resting their heads on folded arms. An odd thumping sound came through the walls from the adjoining room. Dean groaned. “Deep joy.”

Castiel turned his head and regarded the familiar profile. “Do you regret that that is not you?”

“What? Fucking an ME into the mattress?”

“Not specifically a medical examiner. Any woman.”

“To be honest, Cas, after what we saw tonight….” He turned and met Cas’s gaze. “I’d rather be here doing exactly what I’m doing.”

“Looking at me?”

Dean smiled. “We’re doing more than looking, trust me. Now shut the fuck up and go to sleep.” He followed action with words and pulled Cas into a hug, tucking him against his chest. “A wise man once said we’ve always been weird and fucked up, so we’re just going with the flow, okay?”

But Castiel was already asleep, exhausted by the shock of the deaths he had been unable to prevent and the emotional strain of attempting to work out exactly what he was doing with this exasperating, annoying man.

Dean held him until he was sure Castiel was deeply asleep then extricated himself from the tangle of limbs so he could sleep as well. He had fucked up badly tonight and he knew it. Off guard, obsessing about Castiel, he had let others suffer for his inattention. People had been killed on his watch, and that was not going to be allowed to happen again. As he tipped slowly into sleep, listening to his brother enjoy extra-curricular activities he was not, Dean made a vow to the universe that the Highway of Death had seen its last victims. He put one hand on Castiel, just to have a connection, and slid the last few feet into unconsciousness.


	20. Chapter 20

Falling asleep in the same bed had been one thing: tired, depressed and guilty had been something of a cockblocker anyway.

Morning, however, with the inevitable bright wash of all things good and new was a different matter. Dean woke with his usual hard erection to find Castiel turned on his side watching him. Dean coughed lightly. “Awkward.”

Castiel nodded. “I have been thinking the same since I awoke and heard… Jennifer… oh, and Sam… in the shower. Together. I apologise, but there was nowhere else to take… this….” He glanced down for a moment. 

Dean closed his eyes. “Cas, I’m not… ready for this. I’m sorry, but….”

“Dean. Be quiet. If you moved closer to me now you would see me gather some remaining thread of grace and depart. Trust me when I say that I am as confused by this situation as you.”

They heard noises from the shared shower. 

Dean swore softly under his breath. Castiel began to laugh at his expression. Dean stilled. ”I’m glad you’re here, Cas. Don’t ever leave.”

Castiel pursed his lips. “I cannot. I need to piss, and Sam is conducting an autopsy with the medical examiner in our bathroom.”

Dean laughed. “Never teach an angel sarcasm.”

Finally they heard the outer door to the cabin slam and the sound of voices in the lot. Dean pounced, climbing over Castiel pinning him to the bed and crowing in triumph as he got to the bathroom first.

Castiel was amazed by the easy teasing the brothers allowed themselves when Sam came back from breakfast to join them. He didn’t seem especially embarrassed about what had happened. Castiel would have been curled into exquisite angst had someone heard him having… intercourse. Repeatedly. It was unthinkable, and he felt embarrassed on Sam’s behalf. Dean seemed delighted with the whole situation, and after watching them together for a while, Castiel realised that, as with many of their other bizarre quirks, this was the way the brothers coped with the horrors they faced on an almost daily basis. Dean was laughing again, and that was good enough for Castiel.

 

They donned their suits and drove once more to the crash site, which was by now full of emergency vehicles. Dean approached the Chief he had spoken with the day before, and the man nodded to him. “You seen the like of this before?” Dean was thinking, yes, in photographs of a highway in Kuwait, but he didn’t say this to the weary man. The Chief scratched under his hat. “I’m gonna close this damn highway without that spur. Can’t take another one of these. Gets in your soul, you know? Wears you down.” Dean did know. 

There was not much they could do, nothing they could add to the investigation until nightfall. Sam offered to travel with the technicians from the ME’s office and examine the remains. No one could even raise the energy to make a comment on the obvious. He dropped Dean and Castiel back at the motel and took the Impala into town. Castiel flopped down on Dean’s bed but rose again swiftly, his nose wrinkling in disgust. Dean chuckled. “Yeah. Come on, let’s go eat and leave this place to housekeeping.”

They went to the diner together and ordered. There was no rush, nothing to do until dark. After they had their food and were picking at it without much enthusiasm, Castiel cast a quick glance to Dean and asked cautiously, “Do you think Sam will accept… this… how things have changed between us?”

Dean began his usual habit when nervous of tearing small pieces of paper from whatever was to hand. “You asked that yesterday and my answer is the same, Cas. Nothing for him to know or accept. This is just… something, yeah?”

Castiel gazed out of the window for a while. “If he finds out without….”

“Will you drop it? How’s he gonna find out? Huh? And there’s nothing _to_ find out. It was a kiss.”

“More than one.”

“I’m not counting, and I’m not talking about it.”

Castiel sighed and turned back to face him. “What are we going to do tonight?”

“Can’t gank what we don’t know. Tonight we bring it on. I’m thinking make the damn thing manifest, whatever it is.”

“How?”

“We’ve got a car.”

“You are not serious.”

“I’m not sayin’ we drive head on….”

“Good! I’m very glad you made that clear!”

“But nothing stopping us kinda… creeping along, just fast enough….”

“This is insane.”

“Welcome to Team Free Will.”

Later that night, none of them were particularly happy about being part of Team Free Will. Driving slowly up and down a stretch of highway at ten miles per hour was making Dean so tense he was snapping at the others even when they were silent. And they were silent: Castiel leaning forward as if staring at the dark in front of them could make visible what so far had remained invisible; Sam gripping the dash, bracing for impact, his knuckles white. The night was, yet again, cold and clear, the stars the only illumination other than their lights on the long highway. 

“Perhaps we need to go faster, Dean.”

Castiel gave the younger brother a horrified look. “I think we should slow down!”

Dean tried to laugh. “Slow down any more and we’ll be pushing. Baby wasn’t made to go slow like this. Huh, what’s that? He was watching lights approach in the mirror. Castiel and Sam swivelled in their seats, and Sam let out a relieved breath. “Just another car. Let them go past.”

The car sailed past them, motoring fast, places to go, two small children peering at them from the backseat. Sam laughed and let go the dash. “Remember us, Dean, when….” There was an almighty crash forty feet in front of them. Dean remembered someone screaming, “Tank!” as he pulled the Impala to the side, the tyres losing purchase on the soft sand at the side of the road. He righted it and the tyres spun, and he looked into the fireball and saw for himself - a tank. A real, solid, of-this-world tank. Then there was just flame and smoke and the stars shining through where the machine of death had sat fixed upon the road. He heard a car door slam and saw Castiel running toward the fireball. “Cas! No!” He tore out of his seat, following. Castiel could not approach; the heat was too intense. He shielded his face with one arm; Dean caught hold of the other, and they had to avert their eyes. It was too horrible to watch. As with the night before, tiny burning fragments rained down around them. They did not care to know what they were. Dean pulled Cas back, dragged him to Sam and screamed over the noise, “We find those graves and we salt and burn that fucker!” Sam was watching the fire, the light reflecting in his eyes, his voice hoarse. “A tank. They manifested a _tank_.”

“I don’t care if they manifested the whole fucking army, Sam. This ends.”

Later that night, sharing one room as no one was going to sleep, Sam huddled over his laptop, and Dean paced, waiting for the sun to come up so they could get to work. He had checked their supplies of salt and the atmosphere was tense. Sam turned his screen so the other two could see. “You guys agreed? We all saw this, right?” 

Dean nodded. “That’s the fucker. Gank a tank. Catchy. Not.”

Castiel added, “I think that was the sound I heard, Dean, when we were….” He glanced at him then added swiftly, “On watch. When we were watching. It was tank tracks and gears. I have never heard that sound before and do not wish to again.”

“Technically it wasn’t a tank, Cas. It was a Bradley. A….”

“It was a fucking tank, Sam. And it’s going to die. You found where these fuckers were buried yet?”

“Only one was buried - what was left of him. The others were cremated. We’ve one grave at the base. Next to the old chapel. Guess it’s abandoned now.”

“Lonely in death.”

“Do not fucking start with your lonely roads and lonely graves, Cas. I don’t give a damn about this guy. He’s got issues? He got shafted in the war? He’s gonna have issues when I fucking burn the crap outta him. Sun up? He’s toast.”

“I am not disagreeing, Dean. In fact, if you promise me that we will drive at walking pace, I suggest we leave now.”

Sam nodded. “They’re probably at the site now, Dean. Cops and the ME. I doubt the manifestation will appear with so much activity. Could be a good time to go.”

“Awesome.”

They drove back out, tense, angry, yet focused. Dean rolled his shoulders, unable to free his mind from the pale little faces in the back window. He felt a hand rest lightly over his collarbone and Cas squeezed gently. Sam glanced over at the gesture, and Cas withdrew his hand and said, as if he were merely directing Dean’s attention, “Emergency lights.”

Dean nodded. “Sam, we get stopped you play nice with your girlfriend, ‘k?”

Sam nodded, but they worried for nothing. The cop on the cordon waved them through, his face a pale sickly green in the blinking lights. Castiel twisted to watch the wreckage being lifted onto the flatbed of a truck. He shivered. The transience of human life had never frightened him before. He turned back to watch the heads of the brothers in the seats in front of him and wondered, not for the first time, what he would do if he lost them. 

Morbid thoughts weighed them all down, so it was satisfying to take a pair of bolt cutters to the gate and force entry to the empty base. It was eerie driving around the abandoned storage units that had once held the Bradley Fighting Vehicles and housed the men who had crewed them. The place would have felt haunted without the horror they had witnessed that night. They found the chapel relatively easily, as they were soon able to see its small steeple above the sheds. The churchyard had over a hundred graves of servicemen and their families. Although Dean did not want to encourage any more of Cas’s poetic thoughts on loneliness and isolation, even he was moved by the thought that these graves had been abandoned and left with as little thought as the looming sheds behind them. They located the grave of Master Gunner Sergeant Bill Dury easily enough, and with a grimace of familiarity, Dean began to dig. They traded places until, despite the cold of the night, they were all sweating. Eventually they heard the hollow clank they had been waiting for, and it was a quick job to lever off the lid of the coffin, douse the remains, and set them alight. Dean stared morosely at the flames. Castiel watched him for a moment then closed his eyes and began to pray for the tormented soul of a man who had done his duty in a world where that concept was often blurred. When he opened his eyes, Dean was watching him. They held each other’s gaze in their familiar way. Dean nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been a douchebag. Poor guy didn’t deserve to die sitting the desert roasting his nuts. You should tell me, Cas. When I’m being a jerk.” He looked incredulously at the expression that passed between the other two and rolled his eyes. “Bitches.”

“Jerk.” 

“Okay. Okay. It’s done. We good to go?”

They packed the salt and the shovels into the Impala. Dean stretched. “You wanna drive, Sammy? I’m beat.”

Sam shook his head and slid guiltily into the backseat. “I didn’t sleep very well last night for some…. Okay, very funny, Dean.” Dean grinned at Cas and nodded toward the passenger seat alongside him. “Shotgun?” 

They bumped back along the base track, now rutted and overgrown in places from disuse and eased back onto the highway. Castiel opened his window despite the cold night air and, once again, asked Dean to stop by the small memorial. He frowned, climbed out and removed the remains of the flowers. Dean sighed but did not join him: he wasn’t feeling _that_ kindly toward the guy they’d just ganked. Castiel slid back into his seat and nodded. Dean put the car into drive and began to rummage for some music. They’d gone maybe fifty feet when, suddenly, Cas screamed, “Dean!” With reactions honed over years of driving and his love for Baby, Dean spun the Impala onto the soft sand of the desert, a sickening crunch and screech of metal down one side making him scream in fury. Castiel and Sam were shouting in panic at the manifestation of a vast Bradley Fighting Vehicle in their path. “The fucker. The fucker. Sam! What went wrong?” Dean bumped the car over the soft sand and came to a halt. He twisted in his seat. “Sam?”

Sam was scrambling up from the floor where the near crash had sent him. “He must have something from the Bradley, Dean, something he’s using to manifest the vehicle. We need to find it and destroy it, too.” 

“No shit, Sherlock.”

Dean was about to put the car into drive once more, when Castiel said in a tone of voice Dean had never heard from his friend before, “Dean, it is still visible and it’s… heading toward us! Drive!”

Dean swore some more, rammed the car into drive and pressed the accelerator. The car stayed put, its rear tyres skidding in the soft desert sand. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Cas, Sam, get out. Lighten the load and fucking push.” They scrambled out and ran to the rear of the vehicle, only too well aware of thirty tones of metal bearing down upon them. The sound was horrendous. Cas winced, turning around, pushing, his feet slipping on the sand. The car lunged forward, and Dean screamed for them to jump back in. He swung the car around, and tried to head back toward the asphalt, but the Bradley swung with them. Dean floored the pedal, and they all lurched forward, the rear tyres of a car never meant for off-road use spinning uselessly once more. Without prompting, Castiel and Sam fell out once more, running to the rear. Castiel turned again to watch the approaching Bradley. He was mesmerised by the vast looming power of the machine and the glint of the metal in the deadly cold moonlight. Suddenly he tore at Sam’s arm. “The memorial, Sam. Back at the road. It’s made from the Bradley. It’s gunmetal. They made his memorial from a part of the vehicle.” He ripped open the trunk and pushed holy water and salt into Sam’s arms. “You have to destroy it! Run!” Sam didn’t hesitate and began to run toward the Bradley, skirting it warily as it continued its relentless advance on the stricken car. Castiel ran back around to Dean’s side. 

“Sam is destroying the marker. Get out, Dean. We’re stuck. There is nothing you can do.”

“I am not leaving Baby to be squashed like a fucking bug in the sand. Move away!”

Castiel turned. The Bradley was about fifty feet away and closing fast. He grabbed Dean’s arm and began to drag him from the car. “Get out! You will be killed, Dean!” Dean shook his head and punched his hands away, still trying desperately to free the car. Castiel bit his lip in frustration but began to rock the car, using all his considerable strength to get a slight motion going. It was enough for the tyre to get grip. For one moment they thought they were free, but then the sand began to fly once more, and the rear wheels continued to miss. Castiel ran to the rear of the car once more and ripped off his shirt, throwing it under the wheel and pushing at the same time. It was useless. With a grunt of fury he returned to the front, took hold of Dean and ripped him bodily from the seat, dragging him across the sand as he fought and kicked. The Bradley was upon them. Their ears began to hurt from the noise of the grinding tracks on the sand. It was bearing down upon the car, the ground was shaking from the power of the beast, and then there was nothing but starlight and the ticking of the stressed engine of the Impala, battered, stuck, but safe. 

Dean stood shakily to his feet. His face crumpled, and to his utter embarrassment he began to sob. He couldn’t look at Baby’s side. He couldn’t bear to think of the damage to the engine and gearbox. He sank to his knees in the sand. He felt arms encircle his head as Castiel held him silently. Sam came running back. He fell to his knees in front of Dean and hugged him too, shouting, “You coulda’ been killed, Dean! You total jerk.”

Dean laughed through his tears. “Bitch.”

Castiel left the brothers to their own brand of comfort and walked to the rear of the car. His shirt was the worst for wear, but he shrugged it back on. He was cold. He was cold and shaking and had thought he had lost Dean. He realised with a sense of utter terror, that it had not been someone walking over _his_ grave that he had sensed here in this unforgiving desert, but someone walking over Dean’s.


	21. Chapter 21

They drove slowly, a ragtag group back to the motel. Dean still could not bring himself to look at the damage to his car, and the others didn’t have the heart to tell him what they had seen. He winced at the sound from the gearbox and gripped the wheel so tightly that his hands shook when he prised them loose. But they could not drive back to South Dakota until the car had been checked over. Sam wanted to say goodbye to Jennifer, and Castiel wanted to make the visit he had promised. They parted ways with little to be said. Dean took the car to a garage and persuaded them with charm and a shared love of the old beauty to allow him to use the inspection pit. Sam spent the morning with a different beauty, wondering whether, if he had not almost lost his brother, he would be making a different decision about returning to life in Sioux Falls. Castiel spent the morning walking in a French garden created with love in a hostile and unforgiving land. He thanked his host for her hospitality, and she said that it was an old saying in Corsica, where she had been born, _treat every stranger as if an angel were at your door_. Castiel found this sentiment, offered with an aged hand in his, broke some defence he had erected around his heart since the events of the night - when he could not make Dean leave the car - when he had seen, as clearly as if had happened, Dean’s body crushed and bloody in the desert sand. He found himself telling this grandmother of his sudden fear of death, at his confusion about the vulnerability of life, and about love: how he had fallen in love and could not now find a way out of that dark hole of pain. She had no great wisdom to offer him, only the perspective of someone who had already lost much to war, and who had travelled halfway around the world to marry an American soldier, leaving her country, her language, and her true heart behind in a rocky hillside village under a Mediterranean sun. But it was enough. It enabled him to draw some tiny filament of his previous grace around his heart and heal it, so he could continue to be the guardian and protector of the man he loved. 

Dean collected Sam from the ME’s office and Castiel from the address he had given him, and they took their accustomed places in the car, mentally preparing for the long trip ahead.

“How’s Baby?”

Dean gave Sam a wink. “She’s good. Near miss, but she kicked that fucking tank in the balls and took it down.” They high five’d, and Sam pulled out his phone to call Bobby and update him on their arrival. Dean turned the mirror and looked at Castiel. He pursed his lips. “You’re quiet.”

“I am always quiet, Dean.”

“Not when you’re screaming at me to get out of the car you’re not.”

Castiel had to concede this. “No. Not then.”

“So, you okay?”

Castiel huffed. “I seem to have torn every muscle in my neck and shoulders. I believe it may have happened when I was trying to lift four thousand pounds of metal by myself. Or it may have happened trying to lift you. I am not sure.”

“Gee. Thanks.” He drove for a while, the mirror still turned to watch Castiel, then said he quietly, “Baby’s gonna be fine, ya know? No harm here, Cas. Nothing that can’t be fixed.”

 

Dean and Sam drove in shifts, Castiel relinquishing the backseat to whichever of the brothers needed to sleep, so they arrived back at Bobby’s exhausted and dirty, but oddly more cheerful than when they had left Arizona. Young, fit and naturally confident, the brothers had begun to realise they’d done a pretty amazing job, and _gank a tank_ had become their favourite, if slightly overused, expression on the way home. Castiel had other things on his mind.

The first opportunity he had to get Dean alone, in the yard while Dean inventoried the damage and the repairs he was now looking forward to making, Castiel seized his arm and dragged him to the privacy of the workshop interior. He pressed Dean to the wall and held his shoulders, pinning him. He let his gaze wander over the familiar features, the hair, down the strong body to the boots and up once more. Dean raised his eyebrows questioningly but then exclaimed into a kiss that seared into him, a bite to his lip that hurt, fingers that pulled too tight on his hair and a hot, hard body pressed against his. Castiel pulled off, shook Dean so his head rattled back against the wall and then stalked off. 

That night, Dean was already in bed by the time Castiel came in from the shower. He dropped his clothes on his bed and pulled on the old T-shirt and shorts he had taken to sleeping in. He turned and came over to the edge of Dean’s bed. Dean’s eyes widened fractionally, but Castiel only pushed him over and climbed in alongside him, taking no prisoners. He turned on his belly, threw an arm over Dean’s waist and commanded. “Go to sleep, Dean.”

Dean lay watching the moonlight making patterns on his ceiling, a familiar dance of light and shadow that took him back to childhood. It was the only familiar thing he had to cling to that night. He lay beside a male body radiating heat, heavy, dipping the mattress. An arm circled him possessively, and for the first time in his life, Dean Winchester fell asleep in the protective arms of someone strong enough to withstand the horrors of his life. 

Castiel knew that Dean was not ready for more than sharing space, so despite his desire to entirely possess Dean’s body, as he had once possessed his soul, carrying it carefully wrapped in grace and safe from Hell’s horror, he knew that this was currently all that Dean would give him. When Dean woke that first day, therefore, Castiel had already returned to his own bed and lay buried under the covers, apparently deeply asleep.

Dean started on the car the next day. Castiel sat in the sun, leaning against the wall of the workshop, watching him. Dean liked having an audience, and Castiel liked watching Dean. Occasionally Dean would ask to be passed a tool and their fingers would touch and entwine, both equally fascinated by the change in their relationship. Once, Dean took hold of the slim fingers, glanced toward the house and then pulled Castiel into the privacy of the workshop. Pressed against the wall, lips grinding and bodies pressed heavily together, Dean could not remember why he had found the thought of kissing Castiel so difficult. He didn’t find the kissing problematic now.

Gradually, as the days went by, Dean’s main problem became finding times when he could be alone with Castiel. He loved his brother and he loved Bobby; he enjoyed their company, and did not want things to be different from how they were… but he wanted something else now, and that want confused him, drove him to distraction, changed everything. A simple thing like sitting on the couch watching a movie became something very different if Castiel sat to watch with him. Dean could feel himself yearning to reach out and pull him close. It was a connection between them that had been forged in falling and fear but had grown strong on trust and a shared mission. He could still not take that last step in his mind and twist what he wanted this to be – a bond of brotherhood – into something that he feared it could become – the bond of lovers. He loved Castiel. He loved Sam. He wanted to love Castiel in the _same_ way he loved Sam. Except for the kissing. He groaned when he thought of the way their quick, shared passion would flare at nothing: a glance, a word or a movement. Just the memory of Cas running his fingers through his hair made Dean want to find him and press him into a shadowy corner and capture his attention in interesting ways. He never thought about doing that with Sam. He wasn’t dumb. He knew what was happening, and he didn’t _want_ it to happen. But every time they kissed it became harder to pull apart, to just stop. He would try, but the temptation to pull Castiel back to him, or to give in when Cas would not let him go, was too strong. When they kissed, Castiel was unrestrained, his dark blue gaze rarely leaving Dean’s face, and his touch… he had moved far beyond being satisfied by touching Dean’s face. Castiel’s need was taking Dean down pathways he was terrified to go in case they led him to a place that was exactly where he wanted to be. 

Castiel’s attitude to the whole situation didn’t help Dean’s mood much either. He seemed to alternate between wry amusement at Dean’s dilemma and angry bewilderment at the constant rejection. He wasn’t the best liar either. Living with the guilt of what he was doing wore on Dean’s nerves, so Castiel’s easier acceptance of it worried his stomach into knots of anxiety at the fear that Sam or Bobby would notice. He was solid ground beneath Sammy’s feet, the anchor in all his storms, his protector, his hero. He was Sam’s older brother. There was nothing in this world he would do to lessen himself in Sam’s eyes, and wanting a man… wanting to touch a man… to roll and fuck and fight and to take Castiel down with him to something primal and dark…. That, Sam must never know. And Bobby. Dean could not live in the man’s house under those conditions. He couldn’t and he wouldn’t, and it wasn’t fucking fair of Castiel to want him to. 

 

A few days after their return, Dean was making his final preparations for rebuilding the Impala’s wing when he heard Castiel approach from the house. He sighed. He had work to do. Castiel nudged him then offered him a greasy bag. “Sam and I went into town. Peace offering?”

Dean had taken a mouthful of burger already, so asked with difficulty, “Are we arguing?”

Castiel shrugged. “I think we will be in a minute, yes.”

Dean swallowed. “Son of a bitch. I knew this was too good to last. What?”

Castiel just looked at him for a long time and then he said carefully, “It’s time for me to go, Dean. We both know it.”

Dean sat heavily on the side of the engine bay. “Bullshit.”

“I have been human for almost three months, and I think there is more that I am supposed to do.”

“You’re forcing my hand. That’s what this is. Don’t bullshit a conman, Cas.”

Castiel narrowed his eyes. “I’m not sure if that is what I’m doing or not.” He took Dean’s hand in his, turning it over and inspecting it, as if looking to see if it was clean enough for some, as yet, unknown angelic purpose. Dean’s hand was filthy, covered in oil and blood from work, so he guessed he was failing that test already. Castiel sighed. “What do you want, Dean? And don’t say we’ll talk when we return from somewhere. We have returned, and I want to know.”

Dean raised his chin. He didn’t like being put on the spot, forced to confront his issues. “What I want and what I have room for in my life, here, are two different things. You _must_ be able to see that.”

“I fell….”

“Don’t _tell_ me that again, Cas! I know you fell for me; I _know_ it; I’ve always known it. I know you love me. There, I’ve said it; is that what you wanted to hear?” He stood up sharply, beginning to pace. “But you didn’t fall to force me into… this… with you! We were Team Free Will. We were the brothers Winchester; and you were like family to me. You were like a _brother_ to me. _That’s_ what you fell for. That’s what we were. Why does it have to change?”

Castiel looked down at his hands and pursed his lips, thinking. “Is that what you want, Dean? Is that what you are telling me - that if I stayed, you would want to return to how we were at the beginning? That I would be a brother to you, equal to Sam?”

There was a very long pause as Dean tried to process this heartbreaking question. “Would you stay if I said yes?”

“Tell me that is what you want first, and then I will decide.”

“That’s not fair, Cas.”

Castiel shot off the edge of the hood and came close to Dean, his face flushed with rage. “Nothing about this is fair! Decide, Dean, or I will decide for the both of us.”

Dean felt tears sting his eyes, but he wasn’t going to actually fucking cry them. “Then stay. Please. I need you, Cas.”

Castiel smiled a bitter, heartbreaking smile. “Then the brothers Winchester it will be. I left my entire family to be here, and this will be my new family. Good, we did not need the peace….” He could not finish, and for the first time ever, Dean saw tears in Castiel’s eyes that _he_ had caused. He watched the angel walk away and let the burger drop to the ground. It lay there unwanted with other more precious things that he had just been offered and rejected.


	22. Chapter 22

Dean had to give Cas credit: he never did things by half. Fall from heaven? Become human? He did everything to the very best of his considerable ability. And now he was Dean’s brother, and he was doing that with equal concentration. He moved out of Dean’s room, because sleeping in the same room with your brother was freaky and weird. He moved his cot into the basement and seemed more than happy to have the increased space and privacy. He no longer watched Dean working on the car. He didn’t sit with Dean and watch movies. He spent as much time with Sam as he did with his other brother. He stopped wearing shirts and a tie and dressed like the Winchesters. He even mirrored his speech patterns on them, losing the more formal way he processed his thoughts, swearing more, showing less respect to everything and therefore more to his new family. It was doubtful if, after a few days, anyone meeting the three men for the first time would have suspected that they had not always been family: Dean and Sam and Cas. The brothers Winchester. He even asked Dean to teach him to drive, pointing out, quite rightly, that it was odd that one _brother_ , the oldest _brother_ , could not. Dean, in something of a funk that day for some reason, could think of no reason why his _brother_ , his older _brother_ , couldn’t drive, so with a newly restored Baby to enjoy, he sat outside the house that morning, waiting for his _brother_ to start his first lesson. Castiel came out of the house and climbed into the driver’s seat. Dean took a very long, silent breath and began to give instructions. Castiel cut him off. “It’s not hard, Dean. Drive, steer, brake. I think I can handle it without your help. Just sit there, yeah?” He put the car into drive and drove out of the yard onto the road. Dean gripped the door. Castiel glanced over. “I was miles away. Stop worrying.”

“You need to stop at the….”

“Red light? Oh, right, the four thousand fucking miles I’ve sat in the back of this car didn’t alert me to that fact.” He stopped and put the car into neutral. “Wow, I can manage more than one gear. Awesome.”

Dean turned his face to stare out of the window. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. 

“Where shall I go?”

Dean was tempted to tell him, but just pointed vaguely down the road. “We’ll go to the lake if you want.”

“So, how am I doing?”

Dean was tempted to tell him that as well. “Good, Cas, you’re driving really well. Really carefully.”

“Are you taking the piss?”

Dean twisted in his seat. “Seriously. This is how you’re going to talk from now on?”

“Don’t distract the driver, Dean. It’s the first rule of the road. As my _brother_ you should be more considerate.” He began to rummage in Dean’s box of tapes. “Awesome. Driver’s rules.”

Dean snatched the box away and tossed them in the back. “Licensed driver’s rules. I decide to fake you a licence? – then you can choose the music.” 

“It’s gonna look weird – Castiel Winchester – on my license.” No response. “Don’t you think? Castiel’s a weird fucking name to start with. Cas sounds like a pet dog. Maybe I’ll change it. Change is good, isn’t it, Dean? You like change.”

“Pull over.”

“But we’re not at the….”

“Pull this fucking car over now, or I’ll….”

“Oh, this’ll be interesting. You’ll do what? We’re doing sixty.”

“Cas, I’m serious. Slow down.”

Castiel relented and dropped the car to a better learner’s speed. They pulled up at the lake and parked. Castiel hopped out and went down to the shore, dipping the toe of his boot into the water. Dean watched him from the car then climbed out and sat on the hood. He lay back and closed his eyes. It was peaceful. Same peaceful as if you shot yourself in the head he mused. “You got any money on you?”

He opened one eye. “Why?”

“Well, duh, because I want some, and I don’t have any. I’m gonna get something to eat.”

Dean perked up a bit. “Okay.” They walked over together to the concession stand and Castiel stood debating his options. 

“What’s good?”

“It’s food, Cas, it’s all good. Just pick something, ‘k?”

Castiel did, and they took hotdogs down to the water. Castiel sat on a bench and stretched out his legs. “Nice day.”

Dean sat down alongside him. “Stop it. It’s not funny anymore.”

Castiel said nothing, chewing his hotdog thoughtfully. 

“I get that I’m being punished. Because, hell, it must be let’s-ruin-Dean-fucking-Winchester’s-life day. But this has to stop, Cas. You’re gonna burn yourself out like this.”

Castiel finished his food and tossed the paper in the trashcan. “Better to burn out than fade away.”

Dean reared back. “Seriously, Dude, did you just reference Highlander?”

Castiel frowned for a moment, “I believe it was Blade Runner,” then seemed to realise he’d made a tactical error in his current campaign and said more dismissively, and more in character, “Blade Runner, buddy.”

Dean put his head in his heads, tugging his hair. He was having a surreal argument about pop culture references with a fallen angel impersonating his brother. 

Castiel stood and returned to the lakeshore. He picked up a pebble and turned it over in his hand. Dean was expecting him to skim over the water, turn it into a contest between the two of them. Because that's what he and Sam would do. Instead, Castiel ran his thumb wonderingly over the smooth surface of the stone and then slipped it into his pocket. And it was at that moment that Dean realised that he had made a very bad mistake: he didn’t want another brother at all. He wanted Castiel. He missed him so badly it was like hunger that couldn’t be appeased. Sure, he missed the weird kissing thing, but it was more than that. He missed Castiel: the quiet consideration; the sly sense of humour; the childlike wonder for the world with all its pebbles; his careful speech, trying never to be misunderstood in a world that would never understand him. Sitting on the bench by the lake, Dean had an uncharacteristic moment of utter clarity: he missed Castiel’s love for him. For the first time Dean got the difference between the love Sam gave him - unconditional, irreverent, familiar, implicit – and the darker, more complex, all-encompassing love Castiel had offered. For the first time _that_ love was truly manifest: by its absence. He felt adrift, almost afraid. He had not seen how completely he had come to rely on that love. It hadn’t mattered if they were arguing, fighting, not talking, talking – it had always been there, the undercurrent of their entire relationship. And now it was gone, or suppressed – Dean didn’t doubt that Castiel’s brotherly persona was fuelled by anger, and anger didn’t spring from indifference. It was love’s bitch – it was love rejected. 

He had made a bad mistake, but he had made them before and probably would again. He would make this better. He was Dean Winchester. It’s what he did. 

The temperature was dropping so Dean returned to the car. He was tired. Sleep had eluded him for many nights now. Castiel was quieter on the return trip, apparently deep in this own thoughts, or perhaps just concentrating more on the driving in the encroaching dark. As they entered the house they heard a low murmur of voices, and Bobby called out to them, “You survived then?”

Dean wasn’t in the mood, but he dutifully went into the library where Sam and Bobby were sitting surrounded by paper. “You up for testing those newfound driving skills, feathers?”

“What’s up?” Bobby stared at him for a moment then shook his head as if the bizarre impersonation of Dean Winchester was baffling beyond comment. 

Dean slumped into a chair. “You got a case for us?”

Bobby scratched under his hat. “Not so much, but it’s an odd one. Old friend of mine lives up in some Goddamned wood, one of those prepper types, ya know the sort: stocking up for the end of the world; which I’m all in favour of, don’t get me wrong. End of the world kinda our business. Anyways, seems he had some kind of fool accident. Woke up one morning, went to pick up his damn boots and couldn’t move a Goddamned muscle. Got took to the Doc, and he’s broken about four damn vertebrae. Now, the point of this story is, if I’m boring you three, is when he got took to the hospital what do you think he found?”

Castiel eased himself down onto the arm of a chair and said in a puzzled tone, “Sick people?”

It was so classic Cas that Dean spluttered, choking back a laugh. Sam seemed to see the funny side of this as well – Dean was not the only one who had been baffled by the appearance of Winchester The Third. Castiel looked annoyed, but Bobby forestalled an argument by muttering, “Idjit,” and then more distinctly, “Four other people, same town… all with broken damn backs. Said they woke up, went to do some normal dumbass thing and… snap, bang, crackle. Seems strange, but it could be just coincidence. Old backs, living in damp woods. That ain’t normal to start with. What do you boys think? Course, JD’s in the damn hospital, so he said you’re welcome to stay at his place. Think he was kinda hoping you would, an’ look after all those complicated electrical things preppers seem to think are gonna save them from the end of the damn world.”

Dean smirked. “So, what you’re really sayin’ is, an old friend of yours is in hospital and needs someone to stay at his place and look after it?”

“Did I forget to mention that having you three idjits under my damn feet all day is a mite tiring?” He gave Dean a small, conspiratorial glance. “Especially as I seem to have now got myself three adopted sons….” Yeah, Dean got the message the old man was giving him. They hadn’t been easy to live with since their return from Arizona. He looked at Sam. 

“You up for a trip?” Sam nodded and shrugged. He was good.

Dean turned to Cas. Castiel was watching Sam and mirrored his response. So, it was settled. They went to pack. 

Dean waited until he could hear Sam packing in his own room then descended to the basement where Cas was now living. He was standing by his bed, staring at a pile of T-shirts and jeans, frowning. 

“Need a hand?” 

He turned at Dean’s approach. “No. I’ve got it.”

Dean came close, then closer still. Castiel turned his back, apparently concentrating on the clothes on the bed. Dean came around him, dipping his head, catching Castiel’s gaze and forcing him to hold it. He put a hand on the other’s shoulder and very gradually pulled him into a hug. He felt the angel stiffen in his arms. Very deliberately he put his mouth to Castiel’s ear and said, “I’ve missed you, Cas.” He moved his mouth across to the other ear, just brushing his lips over the stony face. “I’m sorry.” He pulled back a little so he could look into Cas’s eyes. “I wanna try it your way, buddy. Mine ain’t doing shit for me, I’ll tell you that for nothing.” He kissed Castiel’s mouth, desperately hoping his peace offering would be accepted, but Castiel pulled away from the desperate, rough kiss. 

And then he took Dean’s face in his hands, cupping his cheeks gently, leaned forward and kissed him back. It was gentle and intensely loving, and Dean felt tears pricking behind his eyes. It was just relief. Just realising that he had his best friend back, and that he wasn’t alone anymore. They’d never kissed like this before: not rushed, not fevered and painful and keeping up some pretence that the kisses were done to ward off life’s unforgiving reality. There was no excuse for this kiss between two men other than the obvious. Dean walked Castiel back to the bed, still kissing. His legs hit the side and he sat, pulling Castiel down on top on him. The narrow army cot complained and wobbled at their weight. The kiss was broken so Dean grinned slyly and murmured, “Hello, Cas.”

Castiel gave him a rueful smile. “Hello, Dean.”

They kissed again, more heated this time, a difficult tangle of limbs on a bed not designed for such activity. Dean put his mouth to Castiel’s ear and bit the lobe then licked it. “Dean, wait.” Dean groaned. “I need to apologise. Stop it, Dean. Let me say this.” 

Dean kissed into his hair. “I’m listening.”

“I hurt you, and I’m sorry. When I did things in the past that hurt you – my association with Crowley. Damaging Sam. I was only doing what I thought was for the best. But this time… Dean, stop it… this time I _knew_ I was hurting you, but I still did it. I think I enjoyed it. How can that be?”

Dean lay back and ran his fingers wearily though his hair. “Don’t sweat it, buddy. It’s called being human. You were pissed off and angry; I get that.”

“I will make amends to you, Dean. If I can.”

Dean licked his lips slowly. “That a promise?”

Castiel looked annoyed but not enough to stop Dean doing what he was currently doing. 

“Cas? Dean? You down there? You ready to go?” Dean rolled out from under Castiel and lay alongside him on the bed. 

Castiel turned his head and they gazed at each other. Dean had missed this almost more than anything. Almost. 

They gave each other a smile then stood and tried to sort out the now very crumpled pile of clothes that Castiel had been attempting to pack for their trip. Done, they hefted one bag each and made their way to the car. As Sam was loading the bags into the trunk, Dean turned to Castiel and asked casually, “So… what did you do with the pebble?”

Cas coloured slightly. “He had come a long way to be at that lakeshore. From a glacier in a distant land. He was lonely. I set him free.”

Dean looked at him with an incredulous expression. Cas snorted. “Dean. It was a joke. Can I drive?”


	23. Chapter 23

They had entered a new phase of their relationship and it was scary. For someone who ganked monsters for a living, scary was, of course, part of the job - but this fear was different. This was almost good. Dean wouldn’t go so far as to say that he was becoming a fear junkie, but he was a self-avowed Castiel junkie, and the two seemed to go hand in hand. Things had changed, so other things needed to change - the first difficulty being sleeping arrangements. After driving long into the night and through the next day, Sam, checking a map, asked Dean if he wanted to stop and get a room for a few hours rest. Dean was about to reply _sure thing_ but then remembered that things had… changed. If they stopped, he knew what would happen. What he _wanted_ to happen. But that would mean two rooms, which would look freaky. And did he really want this to happen now? With Sam possibly next door? He glanced at Cas. The angel was watching him with an amused poker face that only Castiel could pull off. Son of a bitch - this is why he didn’t do fricking chick-flick romances. What the hell was he supposed to say now? If he said no, we’ll keep driving, would Castiel throw some kind of hissy-fit? But if he said, we’ll get a room, and then…. 

“Sam, I can drive the next shift. I think Dean would prefer it if we kept driving.”

Dean let his forehead rest on the wheel for one moment and sent Castiel a silent prayer. He was fairly sure Castiel could no longer hear his prayers, but then Castiel knew what he was thinking anyway. They changed places, Castiel to drive, Dean to shotgun, and Sam to sleep in the back. They drove on. 

Dean stared out at the passing night. “You must be rethinking some of your falling, Cas - seeing the shit side of the deal you got.”

“Are you fishing for a compliment, Dean?”

“Jerk. Would you give me one?”

“I think pulling you out of hell, rebuilding you and giving you back your life was a good one to start with.”

“I thought God commanded you to do all that.”

“He did. I’m not sure he intended for me to rebuild you quite so perfectly. I took my time. Thought about it a great deal.”

“Hah. You just said I’m perfect.”

“I will hold you to that later.”

That shut Dean up for a while, and he pretended to study the map. “How long you good to drive for?”

“I don’t know. Until I fall asleep?”

“Okay, _so_ not the right answer.”

“Dean?”

“Mmm?”

“I do not want to push you into something you are not willing to do. Being your brother was not all bad. It was less… complicated.”

“I know.”

“I will not leave. If you want to try again with a less… trying… brother, then I will do as you wish.” He turned very briefly, his eyes off the road. “I just want you to be happy.” He faced front again with a frown of concentration.

Dean took a breath and committed himself. “You make me happy, Cas. I need _you_. So I guess that’s your answer.”

“Then perhaps I do find this driving more tiring than I anticipated.” He turned and gave Dean a meaningful look. “Perhaps we should wake Sam so we can find a room to… sleep.”

They drove for another hour until they saw the sign for a motel up ahead. Castiel glanced at Dean. Dean nodded. “You do not need to grip the seat quite so tightly, Dean. We are not going to war.”

Dean didn’t reply, not finding anything particularly funny at the moment. He poked Sam awake and then climbed out to get the rooms. He came back, an incredulous look on his face. “They’re closed for refurbishments! Who the fricking hell closes a motel in November?” 

Sam frowned, yawning and stretching at the same time. “So? We’re good. We’ll just eat and swap the driving. Cas, you hungry? What’s so funny?”

“Nothing, Sam. I apologise. I was looking at Dean’s expression.”

The diner was across the lot and through some trees, about four hundred yards away. Dean began to walk. Sam looked unhappily at the night and the dark. “Hey, Dude, we’re Americans. Drive over maybe?”

But Dean was restless and agitated and wanted to stretch his legs, which worried his brother intensely, as it was the first time he’d ever heard him volunteer for exercise. It was considerably colder now than when they arrived, and none of them had dressed for the walk. 

By the time they came out from the warmth of the diner, it was snowing. Sam cursed, grabbed the car keys out of Dean’s pocket, and began to walk on ahead. Castiel stopped, his face turned up to the night sky, watching the flurries of snow. Dean was about to move past him, but Castiel caught his arm. He held him until Sam was out of sight then pushed him slowly back towards the dark privacy of the trees. 

Dean allowed himself to be pushed. He’d been waiting for this all night. 

They kissed in the cold snow flurries against the rough bark of a towering black spruce. With cold fingers, Castiel unbuttoned Dean’s shirt and slid his hands in over Dean’s collarbone then down around his ribs. The feeling of the cold palms against his warm ribs made Dean groan, and without thinking too much more about anything but how good Cas felt, Dean pushed the hands lower, under the remainder of his shirt, toward the waistband of his jeans. Castiel got the message. He took one hand out and held Dean’s shirt twisted in his fist, pulling him close, and with his other hand he began to undo Dean’s belt. They held each other’s gaze: an intimate familiarity highlighting inexperience. The belt undone, Castiel opened Dean’s zip. Then there was only touch. Dean seized the back of Castiel’s head, pulling him in for a hot, hungry kiss, grinding their bodies together so Cas’s moving hand was enjoyed by them both. It didn’t last long for either of them. They could feel their hearts beating together as they came down off the rush, absorbed, pressed together, curtained and secluded in the snow. When they began to shiver, Castiel started to fix Dean’s clothing. “Sam will be worried. We should go.”

Dean blinked snowflakes off his eyelashes. “I think I need a minute.”

Castiel stood back further into the open space where the snow fell more heavily. He tipped his face back and let the flakes settle on his skin. “It is very cold, Dean, we must go.”

“Son of a bitch! I want back all the time that we missed. Dammit, Cas, I should have done this with you when you first stomped into that frickin’ shed.”

Castiel laughed, keeping his face to the sky. “That would have been wholly inappropriate for an angel of the lord, Dean. “

Dean tackled him into a hug, rocking them, off balance. “But not for you?”

Castiel kissed him one more time. “I gave up everything for you, Dean, and now this is what you have given to me.”


	24. Chapter 24

“Dean. It’s freezing here, Jerk. C’mon.” They could see Sam by the car, stamping his feet.”

Dean glanced down at Cas’s jeans as they walked. “Awkward….”

Castiel rubbed the back of his neck, slightly embarrassed. “Yes, I concur. Apologies. I should have… planned this better.”

Dean leaned close, his lips to Cas’s ear. “You’ve just given me the only fricking orgasm I’m gonna remember when I get to heaven, Cas. Don’t sweat it, ‘k?” He went ahead and opened the trunk, trading insults with his brother. 

“What kept you? Dammit, Dean.”

“Cas wanted to play in the snow. Shut up, Samantha, and just drive.” He threw a blanket to Castiel and took another for himself to the front. He levered the seat back as flat as it would go and covered himself to his chin. Castiel followed his example in the backseat. “Wake me up when we get to friggin’ Maine.”

Sam woke him beyond the border, when they reached the town of Cranberry Isles. Dean sat up feeling pretty foul and mumbled, “This one of the Goddamn places that’s gonna have no Cranberries and no fricking Islands?”

Sam was peering at the map. “The cabin is on a lake. Cranberries grow in lakes or something, don’t they?”

Dean gave him an incredulous bitchface. “On trees, dumbass. Anyway, give me that.” He took the map and began to direct them. 

“Jesus, Dean, pissy or what?”

They were all feeling pretty pissy as they bumped down yet another logging track through dark trees in the snow, following scribbled directions on a map. “Did you know, Dean, there’s only one person per hundred square…. Sorry.”

Castiel leaned forward. “There. Through that gap. I saw something.” The something turned out to be a large, off-road utility vehicle with a selection of ramshackle buildings behind it. 

“Awesome.”

Dean eyed the vehicle with interest as they pulled their bags from the trunk and dug up the cabin key following Bobby’s directions. 

It was hardly homey, but they’d not been raised on homey. They were glad to find a bedroom, a kitchen of sorts and a small main room with two couches in front of a log-burner. It was dark and freezing cold, and it had begun to snow once more. 

“Okay. Sam, go find the generator. Bobby said the instructions were on it and easy. Cas, bring logs in; start a fire. I’ll go find some food.” They were all tired and two of them were particularly dirty, but they dutifully worked hard and within an hour they had a warm cabin, a meal of sorts - and a lit candle. The generator, apparently, only worked the pump and heater for the water. They sat on the couches eating, staring at the candle. “This sucks.” 

Sam snickered.

Castiel started to laugh at Dean’s expression, and suddenly all three of them were laughing and spluttering their food. They had a fire, food, and they had each other. It was enough.

 

The small bedroom only had a single bed and a rickety table covered in old paperbacks. Dean told Sam to take it. He and Cas took the couches. He frowned suddenly. “Where’s the damn bathroom?”

The other two frowned as well. With huge trepidation, Dean opened the backdoor to the cabin, grabbed his flashlight and peered out into the snow. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” An old, jerrybuilt showerhead jutted out from the side of a small wooden shed, which had a picturesque hand-drawn sketch of a pile of steaming dung tacked on the door. Other than a packing crate to stand on, so the water would run off through the cracks into the mud, there was nothing else. This, apparently, was the bathroom: a showerhead in the open yard. 

Castiel pursed his lips. “Perhaps I will just remain in these clothes even with….” Dean rounded on him and pointed a finger. “You shower. Go.” He was de facto older brother and they showered. It was sacrosanct.

Castiel swallowed audibly and looked to Sam for support. Sam tried to look helpful. “Water’s hot, if that’s… yeah, sorry, not helping.”

Castiel returned to the main room and began to unpack a clean T-shirt and some sweatpants to sleep in. He pulled out a towel, narrowed his eyes for battle and pushed past the two brothers out into the snow. “I do not require an audience for this. Please go back inside.”

Yeah, like they were going to miss this. They shot to the window and watched the distant figure through the snow. To Dean’s disappointment the water did appear hot, for clouds of obscuring steam soon rose around the pale figure. Castiel returned, hair wet and looking smug. 

Dean discovered why when it was his turn. 

Castiel watched Dean hopping and swearing and cursing the heavens under the cold water without the benefit of obscuring steam. He’d seen every inch of Dean up close and personal when he’d rebuilt him, but it wasn’t the same. This was far more interesting. 

Dean allowed Sam to wait until morning for his shower. 

They settled down for the night, Sam in the cold bedroom, Dean and Castiel stretched out on couches by the wood burner. 

It was undeniably romantic. The flickering light sent interesting shadows over Castiel’s face, made his dark blue eyes look fathomless. As soon as he heard Sam snoring softly, Dean slid out of his blankets and crossed to the other couch. “Warm me up, Jerk.” Dean Winchester didn’t do romantic.

Castiel laughed. He had already made space for him. 

They had not attempted to shave in the primitive conditions that night, so dark stubble outlined Cas’s strong jaw. Dean put a hand up and rubbed it. Castiel leant forward and allowed to Dean to experience the stubble in more interesting ways. They kissed for a long time, both aware of where this would go if they let it. This close, squeezed together on a couch, it was difficult to miss the obvious. 

Dean eased his lips away from Castiel’s and said in a low voice, “We’re gonna have to talk about this, Cas. When I’m feelin’ like this, I’m kinda used to just… goin’ for it. If you get my meaning.”

Castiel frowned. “Going for it?”

“Jesus, Cas, think about it.”

“You… Oh.”

“Yep. Red-blooded male here.”

There was a long pause and then Castiel commented dryly, “As am I. Now.”

Dean narrowed his eyes. “But you weren’t…. You were….”

Castiel laughed softly. “I was what, Dean? Other than God’s most fearsome warrior.”

“I was gonna say junkless, but I’m not now.”

“Good.”

“Son of a bitch.” He rolled onto his back not caring that this squashed Cas even more against the back of the sofa. “Have I said life sucks yet today?”

“Once or twice, I believe.” Castiel began to trace his finger around Dean’s broad chest. “Take off your T-shirt.”

Dean wasn’t used to being given orders, but he did as he was told, stretching up and dropping the T-shirt to the floor. The finger tracing suddenly became more fun. 

Dean caught his hand before it slid under the waistband of his sweats. They stared at each for moment. Dean shook his head. 

“My turn.”

He pressed his hand to Castiel and the angel groaned, his head going back, his throat exposed in the flickering firelight. Dean held then released, and then on the groaned encouragement thrust his hand under the soft cotton, reeling at the heat and need he discovered beneath. Their mouths came together, seeking reassurance and giving permission. 

When it was over, Dean left his hand imprisoned in the damp heat and felt his body melt with gratitude: he could have this and remain a man.

Cas held him close for a while then murmured, “This is uncomfortable. Please return to your own couch.” Dean laughed. He wasn’t dumb. He didn’t need Cas to actually say that if they fell asleep like this Sam might discover them or that if they stayed like this they would both want more – they had a shared language now, and he understood the hidden message. He gave Cas one last, long kiss, and then reluctantly disentangled himself from the warmth and returned to his own temporary bed.

They lay awake for a long time, despite the dragging need to sleep. After a while, Cas said, seemingly at random, “We could be snowed in tomorrow.”

Dean turned to the shadowy figure across from him in the flickering light. “And?”

“I was wondering what it would be like – to have this… all the time.”

“What? A crap cabin and no bathroom?”

“You are being deliberately obtuse. I believe you know exactly what I mean.”

Dean did, but he wasn’t going to manifest an illusion when he knew damn well it could never be his. 

Castiel sighed and turned on his belly. “Goodnight, Dean.”

“Yeah. Night.” He lay awake for a long time studying the still, silent figure across from him. Things were moving so fast. In a few weeks he’d gone from being unable to picture kissing Cas, to now knowing the weight of him in his hand, knowing how his face contorted with pleasure at release. From just wanting an hour with him on the couch to…. To what? A cabin in the woods where they could actually have a life? He rolled onto his back. Where was the mission? Why had they come all this way? Did he really care about an old man with a broken back, however that had happened? Why not just curl up with Castiel for the rest of his life, pull the covers over his head and say fuck you to the rest of the world. When had the rest of the world said thank you for the sacrifices he’d made? Sam would find another Jennifer. He knew that. Sam was desperate to leave the life and settle and be… normal. Who was making them continue on this mission? No one. He turned again, trying to get comfortable. How many lumpy beds and sleepless nights could one man endure? Hell? Purgatory? Angels? Demons? Or a cabin in the woods with nothing to think about but the shape and feel and the seductive smell of the man who lay a foot across from him in the dark. 

 

When Sam emerged from the bedroom in the morning, too early but desperate to piss, he woke Castiel by kicking at his legs. “Where’s Dean?” 

Castiel groaned and turned into the back of the couch pulling the blanket higher. “Fuck off.”

“Nice, Cas. Nice.” Sam went out to discover that it had snowed heavily during the night. A trail of footprints led to one of the sheds. He prised open the door. “Dean?” 

“Down here, Sam.” A voice came muffled from beneath him. He saw a trapdoor and a ladder and climbed down. 

“Seriously, Dean? It’s six o’clock! What the hell are you doing?”

Dean turned and opened his arms. “End of the world, Sam. End of the fricking world.” Around them in the basement the old hunter had prepared for a world that offered nothing but fear and want. The shelves were lined with cans of food, bottled water, candles, matches, oil lamps, ammunition, guns, knives, and even books. Dean sobered. “This guy understands the mission, Sam. He knows what’s important. He’s not being… distracted? Yeah?”

Sam, still half asleep, looked at his brother’s expression. “At six o’clock in the morning. Sure, Dean. Yeah, I’m focused on the mission.” He hesitated for a moment, then added, “Are you okay? You’ve been acting pretty weird for weeks. Seriously. I didn’t want to say anything because I know what you’re….”

“Shut up, Samantha, I’m fine.”

“… going to say, something like, oh, I don’t know, shut up Samantha, I’m fine?”

“Bitch.”

“Jerk. Seriously, Dean. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Sam, look, this guy - he knows what’s important, yeah? What needs to be done. Shit, look at all this!”

“Dean, he’s living like a hermit with no electricity in a cabin with no bathroom. What’s going on with you?”

Dean leant wearily against one of the shelves. “What do you want, Sam? Is this going to be it for us? One case after another, sleeping on couches, eating like crap, living in the car? What about Jennifer?”

“Jennifer?”

“Not her specifically! What she means. Jesus, Sammy, you know what I mean. Where are we going? Christ, you’re nearly thirty; I’ve been there, done that!”

“This is to do with Cas, isn’t it?”

“What? No. Why do you say that? This is us, Sam. You and me, and what we’re here to do.”

“I’m good with this. You know that. Dean, you’re worrying me.”

Dean smiled wanly. “I’m worrying myself. C’mon, we’ll go do what we always do. Save the world, gank the bitches!”

Sam grinned. “Gank a tank?” 

Dean shook his head and high five’d. What else could he do?


	25. Chapter 25

With bowls of hot water and swearing they managed to shave and dress, and in their suits they went to the hospital to speak with the old prepper. He was flat on his back and clearly very pissed off. “You the Winchesters I’ve been hearing so much about from that old fool Singer?” Dean nodded for Sam to go and speak with the nurses, and he approached the bed with Cas. 

“Dean, Sir, and this is Cas.”

“Well, waste of time you coming here. I’m laid up with as much use as a fart in a field.”

“Have you spoken with the other people who have been injured?”

“Don’t beat about the bush with me, sonny, broke their damn backs, that’s what you mean. And yes, I have. Much good it did me. They don’t know nothin’ either. Going about their lawful business and then this.”

“Sir, we’ll speak with them all ourselves, but did they mention anything unusual happening before the accidents? Is there anyone you can think of who’d want to hurt you?”

“What the hell does that mean? You think someone did this to me? I bent over to put my damn boots on. What did that idjit Singer tell you?”

The nurse came in to check his chart, and Dean took the opportunity to catch Castiel’s attention and head back out into the corridor. “Jesus, I hate hospitals. Sam, you got anything?” Sam came over and joined them. 

“Names of the other victims, and I’ve got a nurse copying their records for me.”

Dean winked at him. “Copying records, huh?” Sam rolled his eyes. 

“I need to find somewhere with the Internet and charge the laptop. Maybe you and Cas should go speak with the other victims and stock up on some supplies we need back at the cabin.” He went back to the nurses’ desk.

“You hungry?”

Castiel nodded. “There is a restaurant in the basement.”

“Yeah? No. C’mon, there’s gotta be somewhere serves real food in town. Victims ain’t going anywhere.” They walked out into the cold and climbed into the car. 

“You woke early.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “And you didn’t, you lazy fuck. So?”

“You were restless in your sleep. I was wondering what was wrong.”

“Yeah, well, don’t.”

He pulled over in front of a likely looking diner but before Castiel opened his door, Dean put a hand on his leg. “Sorry.” Castiel raised his gaze from the hand to Dean’s eyes. “I want to kiss you, dammit. I wanted to kiss you when you woke up. You are sittin’ right there, and I miss you. You wanted to know what’s wrong? That’s what wrong: you. With your damn fuck-me-now hair. Now, get out of the frickin’ car and buy me something to eat.”

Dean climbed out of the car and began to head over the road toward the diner. He sensed Cas at his side and was about to hand him the keys so he could drive them back after they’d eaten, when they heard a scream from behind them and then some shouting. They whirled around to see a woman collapsed on the sidewalk. She continued to cry and scream while people were trying to help her, some calling 911. Dean and Castiel jogged over and without even showing badges they were taken for men in authority, and the crowd around the woman parted. “What seems to be the matter, ma’am?”

“I can’t move. I put my bags down to make a call, and then I felt this pain in my back, and now I can’t move my legs. Help me, I can’t move my legs!”

Dean crouched down by the stricken women. “Cas, get a blanket from the car.” He tossed Castiel the keys and waited until the woman was covered and warmer. “Okay, take it easy, ma’am. Is there anything else you can remember? Have you had back problems before? Did you see anything strange?”

Castiel crouched down alongside Dean. “Show me which direction you came from.” She pointed down toward some shops, but the effort, and hearing the siren, set her off crying once more. Dean and Castiel stood and walked the way she had come. 

A gust of wind blew the light powdering of snow off the sidewalk and swirled it around in small eddies. 

“You sense anything?”

“It’s cold?”

“Helpful, Cas. C’mon, I don’t want to have to talk to the cops just yet.” 

“Although it is statistically unlikely, it is possible that this is a natural phenomenon. It is possible they have some local genetic weakness.”

Dean was staring at something in the shop behind him. “Maybe. But that’s not a fricking genetic weakness.” Castiel turned to see a woman in a candy store behind them. She had two small children with her, and all three were crying, red-faced and hysterical. Both the children had their tongues stuck out of their mouths and their mouths stretched to the sides to almost obscene proportions. When they pushed into the shop and came closer, Dean could see that the children’s eyes were rolled up, only the whites showing. “Son of a bitch.” He tried to calm the mother down but she continued screaming hysterically. Eventually, Dean turned to one of the other customers. “Did you see what happened here?” 

The shocked man held up a small bag. “I was buying some candy.”

Dean licked his lips expectantly, realised that was all he was going to get, and rolled his eyes. “Sir? About the kids, not the candy?”

“Oh. They were just playing around. Like kids. I mean… I… they’re all brats sometimes. Can’t blame the mother. Jeez. That’s just… ugly.”

“Sir? A little more maybe?”

“I don’t know! They were just fighting and messing around, and next thing I knew she was screaming and… I think I’ll just leave this.” He put his bag of candy back on the counter and left swiftly. 

Dean shrugged and picked it up. “Waste not, want not.”

“Dean! Until we know what is causing this, I strongly suggest you do not… oh, too late.”

“You want some?”

Castiel shrugged and took some. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

Dean paused leaving the shop. “What did you just say?”

Castiel frowned. “I have no idea. I do not even know what it means.”

“ _Waste not, want not_! That’s something a frickin’ grandmother would say. What the hell is going on here? Let’s call Sam, see what he’s got.”

They met up in the diner. Sam slid in alongside Dean and put his notes on the table. Dean rifled through them. “Anything?”

“Ask a silly question, and you’ll get a silly answer.” The other two turned to him, and he frowned. “What did I just say that for?”

Dean gave him a grim look. “Good question. What the hell have we got here? Someone tell me they see a connection between people having accidents, kids with weird demonic faces and us saying dumb shit – yeah, we’ve been doin’ it too, Sam.” No one had anything useful to tell him though. They threw around a few theories but nothing seemed to fit. They ate because they were hungry, but no one really enjoyed the food. “Okay, Sam, go give Bobby a call and then go back to the library. Cas an’ I’ll go to the hospital and speak with the other victims. Then we’ll head back to the cabin – I wanna swap Baby for JD’s truck if this snow keeps up. We’ll go get some supplies and meet you back at the library. It’s a plan of sorts. Let’s go.”

They learnt nothing useful at the hospital. The victims didn’t know each other and seemed to have no connection to each other except for living in Cranberry Isles. They made a quick call on JD to see how the old man was doing and ask him where the keys for the truck were. He said they were in it and where the hell else would they be. They walked back to the Impala and drove back to the cabin in light snow. Dean kept his speed down, barely able to get the car down the forest tracks. “We need to buy some food. Can’t go raiding the old coot’s two hundred year supplies.”

“It is ironic that when he finally faces his own apocalypse he is incapacitated and in hospital, and all his preparations went to waste.”

“Yeah, ironic is one way of puttin’ it. You making a list? We need beer. Put that in frickin’ big letters. Write it twice. Okay, fresh food. I’m not living on cans. Meat, eggs maybe. You’re not writing this down!”

Castiel gave him a meaningful look. “I believe I will be able to remember beer, meat and eggs.”

Dean messed around with the truck when they returned, starting it and prepping it for the snow. When he came into the cabin, Castiel was crouched by the burner, adding wood to the fire he’d started. Dean stomped his feet to remove the snow and stripped off his jacket. He came over and crouched alongside Cas, warming his hands. Other than the crackling of the wood and what they were both thinking very loudly it had become extremely quiet. Dean looked at Castiel and Castiel returned the look. No actual words were needed. Dean pulled Cas to him and with shaking hands and fumbling fingers started to unbutton his shirt. Castiel just pulled Dean to his feet and ripped his shirt up over his head. Dean swore and returned the favour. They tore at belts, trying to kiss at the same time, staggered and fell on the couch, pushing jeans to half-mast. Castiel rose over Dean, holding him captive with a glance and then lowered, grinding them together. Dean bit his lip, bringing blood. He closed his eyes to the pleasure, riding it, concentrating on the feel of Castiel’s strong body upon him. Cas’s mouth descended, licking the blood from Dean’s lip, kissing the bite, dipping and grinding. “Open your eyes, Dean.” Dean’s eyes flew open on the command, and they locked their gaze. He snagged his fingers into Castiel’s hair, knowing he was close. The release was sharp and urgent and so pleasurable that Dean swore, his voice broken and hoarse, and then he held Cas tight as the angel shuddered above him with a quiet but no less heartfelt groan.

For the first time they were able to enjoy the quiet time after the urgency. Cas was always quiet, and Dean wasn’t in the mood to talk. He’d had another great orgasm; he was warm and comfortable, and he had Castiel as close as he could without actually wearing him. He snickered faintly at this thought and kissed into his hair. Two firsts then: sleeping with a guy and having some peaceful time afterwards. In Dean’s experience - although even he had to admit that whilst it was extensive, it wasn’t especially varied - girls didn’t want to lie in peace afterwards. In his experience, it was straight to the bathroom for mysterious business from which they emerged perky and fresh, and then coffee had to be made and consumed in bed with crossed legs and talking. And he had to be fascinating or funny and sometimes both. He decided he preferred Castiel’s way of having sex, which, funnily enough, exactly matched his own: think it; want it; do it; do nothing else for some time. Preferably take a short nap.

Castiel wasn’t doing nothing; he was doing something very important: he was listening to Dean’s heartbeat, which was an all-consuming activity, lying on the warm chest, his ear over the heart, his messy hair pressed against Dean’s jaw. He was counting the beats, listening to them slow from the high of release. He had held this heart once, wrapped in grace, gently massaging it, mimicking the movement of life until the fragile spark took hold and the organ could beat unaided. He preferred listening to the dull thud with his human ears. He preferred it all: the smell of their pleasure now drying between them, sticking them belly to belly; the feel of Dean’s warm skin beneath him; even the awkward dig of a belt buckle somewhere on his thigh. He felt himself easing into sleep. 

Dean rubbed his face in Castiel’s hair, heard the even breathing, hitched a blanket over them both and followed the other into sleep.

They awoke to Dean’s cell vibrating in his pocket. Castiel grunted and fished it out for him then sat up while Dean spoke briefly to Sam. 

“He’s done. ‘S go fetch him and get the damn supplies. I feel like shit. What? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Castiel eyed the snow falling outside the cabin. “I was thinking I need a shower.” 

Dean groaned then pulled him back into a rough hug. “I know we need more than this, Cas. I’m not entirely ignoring the obvious.”

Castiel twisted around to kiss him briefly. “If this is all I ever have Dean, it is more than I thought possible before I fell. I am content.”

They took the coward’s way out and washed from a bowl of hot water inside then headed out to the truck. It coped well with the snow, but it was soulless, and Dean missed the Impala. 

They pulled in at the trading store on the edge of town and collected the items they needed. Cas never cared what he ate, and so Dean picked up things he knew how to cook, and anything green he could find for Sam. As he was taking an armful to the counter, he heard a sharp retort from the plate glass window, and having reactions honed since childhood, he dropped to the floor and shouted, “Cas!”

Castiel was standing frowning at him. “A bird hit the window, Dean. I believe it is now dead. No one is shooting at you.”

Dean stood up, trying to restore some dignity. “First time for everything.” He doubled up and suddenly gave an enormous sneeze. “Son of a bitch. Pepper.” It was spilt all over the floor with a few broken eggs. Dean kicked the mess, salvaged what was good and took it to the counter. The boy appeared about to remonstrate, but Dean sneezed again and glared at him. 

Castiel was looking sadly at the bird when Dean emerged with a couple of sacks. He sneezed again. “C’mon. Sam’s waiting.”

As they bumped out of the pot-holed lot, Castiel glanced at Dean and asked, “Are you going to tell Sam?”

Dean flicked him a look. “What? No, we’ve talked about this, Cas. There’s nothing to tell.”

“Nothing?”

“Dammit, don’t go all chick-flick on me. You know what I mean. We’re exactly the same, we just….”

“Spent the afternoon fucking while he works on the case.”

Dean pulled the truck over sharply and rammed it into park. He twisted in his seat to glare at Castiel. “I’m not having this argument with….”

“Yes, you are, Dean. That is exactly what we are doing now: we are arguing about this. We spent the afternoon fucking and sleeping while your little brother worked to solve this case.”

“WE ARE NOT FUCKING! I do not fuck _men_!”

“Tell him or I will.”

“You tell him, and that’s the end, Cas. It’ll all end.”

“Are you threatening me? Are you saying that if I tell him you’ll leave me?”

“Oh, fuck! I’m trapped in the very chick-flick movie I didn’t want to be in. Guys don’t say things like that! For fuck’s sake! Leave? I’ll just cut your damn balls off and mail them to you at the shit place you end up living. On your fucking own. That clear enough?”

“Then if you don’t tell him I will ensure there is nothing to tell.”

“What? What the hell does that mean?”

“Work it out, Dean. You are rumoured to have a brain. Somewhere.”

“You’ll… stop this? You were the one who fricking wanted this in the first place! I just wanted to take you out for a beer. Jesus Christ!”

He slammed the truck back into drive and hit the highway driving too fast, waiting for the usual comment on his deliberate blasphemy. It appeared the angel of the lord was too pissed to bother. 

When they collected Sam, he climbed into the back seat, admiring the truck, until he sensed the atmosphere. He glanced between the two men in the front. “Awesome. What now?”

They hissed, “Nothing,” at the same time.

Sam shook his head. “Not good enough. Spill. What the hell have you two got to argue about here?”

Castiel chuckled, a dark unpleasant sound. “Ah, Dean, the irony of that.”

Dean swung his arm awkwardly but caught Castiel a fairly decent punch to his jaw. Castiel twisted in his seat and punched him back harder. Sam swore at them both as they shuddered to a stop on the forest track, tipped to one side in a small drift of snow. “Unbelievable! You are both unbelievable! What the hell? Get out, Dean. I’ll drive. Cas, you stay there. I mean it. Stay there.” He climbed out of the vehicle, glared at his brother while they swapped positions, and then manoeuvred the truck out of the snow and back onto the track.

Castiel disappeared to one of the sheds as soon as he exited the vehicle, his fury too vast to be contained in the cabin. Sam and Dean carried in the sacks, and Dean began to poke at the embers in angry silence. Sam sat down on the couch. “Okay, I don’t care about this being a chick-flick moment or any other of your crap. What is this about, Dean? You punched Cas for Christ’s sake!”

Dean ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know, Sam, and that’s the truth. We were good, really good. Best buddies. Then we went in that damn store, and he just blew up. Seriously out of control. Okay, I wasn’t exactly trying to calm him down but, shit, I’d just been shot at!”

“Someone shot you? Dean, what the fuck?”

“No, calm down. I thought someone had. I was kinda spooked for a minute, yeah? Dropped the damn groceries, sneezing like shit, covered in frickin’ pepper, then that damn angel….”

“What did you just say?”

“He started….”

“No, not Cas. The pepper. You dropped pepper?”

Dean contorted his face into a look of such incredulity that Sam had to chuckle. “Sorry. Only, look, go get Cas. I think I may have an answer about what’s going on here.” He saw Dean’s new expression and pointed. “Coward. Go.”

Castiel was in the basement with the old man’s supplies. He looked as if he were living through his own small apocalypse. He was sitting on the floor against the shelving with his legs drawn up, his hands over his face. Dean sat down alongside him. “Sam knows something. About what’s happening here.”

Castiel turned to look at him. “That was not us, Dean. In the truck, arguing like that. I felt as if I was being compelled to say things I would never say.”

Dean hooked his arm around Castiel’s neck and kissed his hair. “Cut your balls off? Yeah, like I’m gonna do that. I kinda like your balls.”

“It was the mailing them to me afterwards that confused me. Why would I have need of them back?” 

They kissed on smiles of relief, quick, soft kisses that said far more than words could. It quickly turned into something they’d never needed words for either. Dean pushed Castiel down onto the hard dirt floor and lay over him. It was the first time he’d held Cas down. He pulled Cas’s arms above his head and held him there, wrists pinned together. Castiel lay beneath him, a willing prisoner. Dean knew that if Castiel wanted to escape he could overpower him at any time. He _wanted_ to be here. He wanted to allow Dean this illusion of power. Dean saw for the first time since their relationship had changed that this wasn’t a man beneath him. Not exactly. He was something other: still as much angel as he was man; still an unfathomable, mainly silent, otherworldly creature. And he was allowing Dean Winchester to hold him down on a cold cellar floor and explore the contours of his face with warm lips, to bite his ear, to grind slowly upon him. He was allowing himself to be used for _his_ pleasure. 

Castiel awed him. 

Eventually, Cas murmured, “Stop, Dean. We must not. It would be… awkward.” Dean clenched his teeth in frustration but obeyed. He climbed off the prone figure and offered him his hand to rise. 

Sam was pacing around the small cabin talking to himself when they returned. He was so excited that Dean gave Cas conspiratorial wink and sat obediently on the couch. 

“Okay, so, what have we got… Dean?”

Dean suppressed a smile and let his little brother have his moment in the sun. “Go on, tell us.”

“Okay. Broken backs, kids with weird expressions, us saying weird things… all seemed unrelated, and it was driving me insane, Dean. Even Bobby couldn’t put it all together when I called him. But then just now, you said you’d spilt pepper, and the bird hitting the window. It all came together. Dean, it’s superstitions. It’s old wives tales. Some one is telling them, and they’re coming true.”

Dean glanced at Cas, but he looked equally puzzled. Sam waved some of his papers. “There’s an old wives tale about step on a crack, break your mother’s back.”

Cas frowned. “That is unpleasant, why would…?”

“That’s the point of the superstitions, Cas; they are horrible, but they have their roots in terrible events from the past. Believe it or not, that relates to civil rights in America. And then the kids with their faces – this is gonna sound really weird, but did the wind change just before you saw them?”

Castiel turned to Dean. “It did. You asked me what I felt, and I said I felt cold. That wind, remember? It was swirling around….”

“And then I saw the kids who’d been fighting. Dammit, Sam, what did we used to do when we were kids to annoy each other?”

Sam grinned. “You still do it, Dean: annoying face. And you know the old wives tale… don’t make a face or it’ll stick when the wind changes.”

Dean made a suitable one, and Castiel frowned deeply. “That is unadvisable, given the current circumstances.”

Dean sobered. “So, the weird sayings… yeah, more dumb old wives tales. What the hell was the pepper all about?”

“It’s just another old wives tale: spill pepper and you’ll have a terrible argument. I guess it was just bad luck you were there with Cas and ended up arguing with him. Again.”

Dean had the grace to look guilty and shifty so quickly moved things along. “Okay, so, we know what’s happening, but not who’s doing it or why.”

“I’m thinking witch, Dean. Gotta be. But it’s so random; maybe it’s someone who has a grudge against the whole town? Indiscriminate?”

Dean nodded. “What would you do if you had a grudge?”

Sam frowned. “I dunno. Get a lawyer, maybe?”

Dean gave him a look. “Exactly. And when that lawsuit fails, you attack the whole damn town. So, town this small, how many lawyers there gonna be? Okay, we have a plan. Tomorrow, we visit any law firms and find out if they’ve had any failed lawsuits this would fit. Agreed? We’re gonna catch ourselves a witch. Now, I’m frickin’ starving. Anyone for a Dean special?”

Castiel frowned and Sam clarified for him. “It’s anything he can cook without any cooking actually being involved.”

Dean, in the kitchen, already opening the sacks, huffed. “And that from the six foot four hulk who was a skinny fucking nothing before I started cooking for him.”

Sam raised an eyebrow at Castiel. “Wanna learn how to play poker?”

Castiel did. So Sam and the angel sat in front of the burner, enjoying the heat, whilst their team leader banged and clattered in the kitchen, trying to live up to his reputation with a camping stove and no fridge. But he had a forgiving audience. He had an audience that worshiped the ground he walked on and loved him with a passion that had defied God and all his angels, so he didn’t have to try too hard. He had his brother on one side, laughing and teaching the angel to play cards, and on the other he had the dark passion that now drove his every move, that dominated his thoughts and informed his actions. Sam and Castiel. He was flying high.


	26. Chapter 26

The next day they took the truck into town and headed for the library. Sam quickly found the local lawyer’s office and they walked over. 

It wasn’t hard to find the most likely candidate for witch of the year. A couple of artists had moved into the town three years previous. The husband had been commissioned to create a mural for the town hall - something that would say Cranberry Isles to anyone visiting. He’d been unstable before the commission, but working on it had driven him to despair. He had painted a mural of Islands, then hired a log chipper, positioned it in front of the mural and fed himself, as slowly as he could withstand, into the machine. It didn’t exactly say Cranberry, but it had been a distinctive gesture. When the widow tried to claim the commission for the project, she’d been told that she was being sued… trauma, loss of revenue, bad for tourism and cost to clean the wall. She was facing ruin on top of having a husband who had liquidised himself against a public wall. This alone would have pointed them to her, but on top of all this, her art was… different. She was an artist dedicated to capturing the darkness in the world: the demons and spirits that live in deep places. The lawyer had not told the three of them all this, but they read between the cracks, recognised genuine fear when they saw it – and this from a lawyer was truly worrying – and knew they had found their witch. 

They split up to cover the ground, Dean to the witch’s house, Sam to the artists’ studio she exhibited in and Cas to the cemetery where the unfortunate husband had been buried. They agreed to meet up for lunch in the diner they’d eaten in the day before. Dean’s trip was over quickly. The house was empty and neighbours claimed they hadn’t seen the women for two days. This seemed to be confirmed by the amount of snow piled on the driveway and the lack of tyre tracks or recent signs of clearance. He decided to stop off at the hospital and visit JD before meeting the others at the diner. Castiel’s visit to the cemetery was equally useless. The grave didn’t seem to have been disturbed and even had a fresh bunch of flowers propped against it. It was cold standing looking at the gravestones. It awed Castiel sometimes that he had once been a guardian of such places, a holder of celestial secrets and knowledge. Now all he wanted to do was return to the warmth of a diner and sit across from Dean Winchester and study the expressions on his face. He huffed lightly at his own idiocy and walked carefully back through the snow to the road. 

They met as agreed, back at the diner. Sam was late. They ordered for him and waited. He did not arrive. By half past the hour Dean was worried enough to text him. It went to messaging. Another five minutes and they agreed to leave. The studio was in a converted warehouse and was full of unsettling images of the demonic in art. Dean and Cas gave each other a look then pushed open the door and entered. A group of middle-aged women were sitting around in a circle knitting. It was scarier than demons. Dean gave Cas a slightly alarmed look then coughed. “We’re looking for Rebecca Wilson?” A woman with unnatural looking red hair waved her needles cheerily at them. 

“You’re lookin’ at her. What can I do for you?” She continued knitting with great concentration. Before Dean could frame his question and ask if she had seen his brother, Sam came out from a room at the back. He smiled at the two of them then folded himself at the woman’s feet. “You wanting to examine my artwork, gorgeous? I can always find a little piece for a pretty boy.”

Dean stared at Sam then at Castiel. Cas just raised his eyes as puzzled as Dean. “Sammy?” Sam did not turn his head and acknowledge Dean’s presence. 

“Oh, your brother’s a mite too busy to be bothering with you now, lovely. You and your pretty friend best be on your way. Leave me and mine alone.”

“Hey, bitch, what have you done to my brother?” He took a step toward the witch, but Castiel grabbed his arm.

“Dean”, he murmured, “look at Sam.” 

Sam appeared to be… blistering. It was the only way Dean could describe it. As he went closer, more and more red blotches broke out on Sam’s skin. “Sammy, what the fuck? Can you hear me? You in there?”

He backed off and the red splodges disappeared. The woman laughed pleasantly. “Sammy dear can’t hear you, Dean. He’s seen the light. The dark light. He’s with me now, aren’t you, sweetie-pie?” She chucked Sam’s cheek and made a kissy face at him.

“What do you want, bitch?”

She smiled and started a new line of knitting. “Hmm. What do I want? What can I say, boy? Girls just want to have fun!” The other women began to laugh, and one of them began to stroke Sam’s hair, twisting it up into a tail then letting it fall in a cascade. It made Dean sick to his stomach to watch, but every time he approached, Sam’s skin would begin to blister. He pointed at the witch then at each one of her unholy circle. “You’re dead. You get that? No one fucks with my brother.”

She made a kissing sound at him and patted Sam’s head, regarding Dean and Castiel with keen interest. “Mmm, when I’ve finished with my long-haired beauty, I think I’ll be coming for Thursday’s Child. Isn’t he a yummy little piece of angel cake, girls?”

Dean pulled Castiel out of the studio and stood fuming on the sidewalk. Castiel looked anxiously back toward the door. “It is not wise to antagonise witches, Dean. You know this.”

“Yeah, well, it’s Sam, Cas. What the fuck is she doing to control him? No way this could be a hex bag.”

Castiel took hold of his arm and guided him back toward the truck. “I think it’s the knitting, Dean. Did you notice the way they played with Sam’s hair? They have incorporated his hair into their work, and that has bound him to her. Witches have traditionally used this method of control when they cannot use hexes. Perhaps if we can destroy that, the bonds will be broken.”

Dean nodded. “I’ll go back in there and fucking shove that yarn crap up where the sun don’t shine.”

“Something more practical might be advisable. We need to draw her out from her circle of supporters. Isolate her, and then we can destroy her power over him.”

Dean gave him a dark look. “I know just the thing….” 

It was just a small house fire. It smoked a lot, possibly fuelled by the accelerant that had been poured on it and the number of old tyres and plastic containers stacked in it. Someone called 911, and someone told the neighbours to call the studio and inform the owner of the fire.

When they saw the witch leave the gallery, Dean and Cas entered through the backdoor. The place was empty with no sign of the women or their bizarre craft projects. The gallery led to an upstairs set of rooms. It was dark on the stairs, and they climbed warily. They heard movement. Cas pulled his knife from his waistband, but Dean whispered, “It might be Sam, Cas. We need him in one piece.”

Cas nodded. Suddenly, they saw a flickering light. Dean looked up, and Sam was standing on the landing, holding a single candle. It illuminated his face from below sending eerie shadows on the walls. “Sammy? You okay?”

Sam smiled and nodded. Cas took Dean’s arm, holding him back, but Dean shook him off and continued to climb. Suddenly, before he could react, an axe came whistling through the air. It was only Castiel pulling him back that made it thump into the wall and not his head. Sam giggled and disappeared into a doorway down the hallway. “Son of a bitch!” Dean ran down the hallway toward the closed door. He took a breath and shouldered it open. Before he could call out for his brother, he sensed a presence behind them and, once more, Sam emerged from the shadowy hallway, the single candle making some evil spark in his eyes. He began to hum, and along with the eerie sound, they could hear whispers all around them as if the shadows were chanting accompaniment to his music. _Here comes a candle_ …. Sam swung the axe in a vicious circle towards Castiel. He ducked and the axe slammed into the doorframe. Sam left it there and faded back into the shadows of the hallway, and by the time Dean had pushed past Castiel, he was gone once more. “You okay?” _Here comes a candle to light you to bed here comes a candle to light you to bed_.

Cas nodded. “We need to leave Sam for now and find where she has put the hair. We have to break her control over him.”

“I’m not leaving my Goddamned brother, Cas. You go find the bitch’s stash. I’m gonna find Sam.”

“Dean….” 

“Go, we’re wasting time. It’s Sam, Cas, he won’t hurt me.”

Castiel was fairly sure that Sam would, given the fact that he had tried twice to decapitate them, but he could see his arguments would fall on deaf ears. He nodded and began to kick open doors one by one. _Here comes a candle to light you to bed here comes a candle to light you to bed_. All the rooms were empty except for shadows and whispers: _here comes the candle to light you to bed_. Grimly he climbed a rickety set of stairs to an attic, and when he pushed open the door, he knew he’d found his goal. The attic was vast, its end obscured in the gloom, but hung from the rafters were what appeared at first to be human skins. Castiel recoiled from the sight then realised he was looking at yarn intricately knitted into the approximation of human forms and each one had hair attached to its puffy, knitted face. He swallowed then began to douse the hanging figures with holy oil. He set them alight, and they burned as if alive, twisting in the shadows. The whispering became frantic, _here comes a candle to light you to bed here comes a candle to light you to bed here comes a chopper here comes a chopper_ , oily black smoke obscured his way to the door. When he reached where he thought it had been there was just a blank wall. The smoke filled his lungs, and it tasted of things he had not tasted since hell: foul corruption and wriggling things that bury deep in the soul. _Here comes a candle to light you to bed here comes a candle to light you to bed here comes a chopper here comes a chopper_ …. He ripped off his jacket and held it in front of his face, feeling along the wall for the exit. His legs began to weaken and he staggered _here comes a candle to light you to bed here comes a chopper to chop off your head!_ He fell to his knees, his eyes blinded by smoke, but before he could lie down and give in to the agonising death, he heard a scream: one fearful cry in a voice he would know and respond to even in death. He pushed himself up and followed the sound, stumbled down the stairs and into the room opposite. “Dean?” He could hardly make sound, his voice raw from the smoke he’d inhaled. “Dean!”

“Cas. Here.” It was Sam’s voice, and it led him through into another room. Sam’s stricken face rose to meet him from where he was huddled on the floor over a shadowy figure. The whispering had stopped.

“Dean?” Cas fell to his knees. There was blood everywhere. Sam looked at Castiel, tears streaming down his face, and he said in a hysterical voice, “I hit him, Cas, I hit him…. ”

Castiel stretched out two fingers instinctively, reaching for Dean’s forehead, but he knew it was useless even before the touch made contact. You didn’t survive an axe to the throat. Not when you could see the spine through the gaping maw of flesh. He screamed, an unholy sound he had not made since the fall, when it had been his grace ripping from him and leaving him bereft. Now it was Dean, ripped from him, leaving him alone. Sam was moaning and trying to hold the cut together, trying to keep his brother’s blood within his body. That it wasn’t still spilling was not due to his efforts but to the fact that Dean’s heart had stopped pumping. Castiel grabbed Sam’s head with bloody hands. “Do something! What can we do?”

Sam looked at him from a very long way away. “There’s nothing we can do. I killed him. I killed Dean.”

Castiel hit him, a vicious slap to his face. Sam reeled back. “Think of something, Sam. You have the knowledge. You can do something. This was the result of a spell. I do not accept that Dean is dead. If he is dead then I will kill you. Slowly. I will curse you with knowledge that only angels have. I will ensure that your afterlife is one of misery and pain. Think. I will _not_ accept no for an answer.”

Sam swallowed, distraught, scared, confused. He put a hand up to where Castiel had struck him. “There’s one thing that is supposed to be able to reverse a witch’s spell, but I’ve never heard it work. And it has to be done now, or nothing can reverse this. Oh, God, Dean. It wasn’t designed for something like this….”

“What, Sam? Whatever it is, we will try it.”

“We _can’t_ , we need a bible. Where can we get a bible in time?”

Castiel closed his eyes. “Sam, you have an angel of the lord here, we don’t need a bible. What do we have to do?”

Sam told him. With a frown and a prayer to a Father who rarely listened to him, Castiel, angel of the lord, began to recite the bible backwards. The candle continued to flicker, making Dean’s lifeblood black on the floor and the tears on their faces look like trails of starlight. His smoke thickened voice began, “Amen all you with be Christ Jesus Lord our of grace the Jesus Lord come so even….” Sam closed his eyes. He hardly believed any more, but anything that could help his brother he would do. He had killed Dean. “ Amen quickly come I Surely saith things these testifieth which he.” Sam began to pray as well, listening to the voice of an angel who would allow no doubt into his voice, who spoke from love and the conviction that love would be enough. “Book this in written are which things the from and city holy the of out and life of book the of out part his away take shall God prophecy this of book the of words the from away take shall man any if and.” The candle gutted and went out. It wasn’t a good sign. Castiel redoubled his efforts, his voice becoming firmer, demanding that God listen to him. “Book this in written are that plagues the him unto add shall God things these unto add shall man any if book this of prophecy the of words the heareth that man every unto testify I for.” He gripped Dean’s throat and began to shout, “Freely life of water the take him let will whosoever and.” He felt movement under his hands. He continued, switching to Enochian: if his Father wouldn’t hear his human prayer, he’d better listen to an angelic one. Suddenly, from the darkness, they heard a hoarse, “Sammy? You okay?” Sam began to laugh and sob in uncontrollable grief and relief. Castiel bent and through the blood and gore he sought Dean’s lips and finished the prayer he had been silently screaming at God into the warm human mouth. He kissed Dean’s lips for a long time, breathing his love into him. He gripped the bloody head to his chest. He had once told Dean that miracles do happen, and he knew one had happened here.

They helped Dean down the stairs, his legs wobbly more from shock at seeing his brother swinging an axe at his head than from the residual ill effects of that blow. He was covered in blood, but that was okay. By the time they got to the car he was more concerned about his companions than his own ordeal. Sam was still distraught. It wasn’t every day you got to chop your brother’s head off. Castiel was silent and closed off, withdrawn to cope with the anger and fear and the lingering sense of helplessness. Was this to be his eternal punishment, some bargain with his Father that he had to make? It seemed he could have a human life, but he couldn’t have Dean Winchester. 

They drove out to the witch’s house, but she was long gone. Dean was agitated and restless, unable to calm his brother and unable to break down Castiel’s wall of silence. He insisted they drop him off at the town’s motel and return alone to pack up the cabin. He would take no argument from either of them, finally persuading them that he needed a hot, indoor shower and clean clothes. And some peace and quiet. They had no option but to bring him the clean clothes. They saw him to the room and watched him go into the shower, shedding his blood-soaked clothes as he went. Together they went to the truck and headed back toward the cabin. There was much to say, but neither was in the mood to make conversation. At last Sam said in a tight voice, “What’s been going on, Cas?”

Castiel could still taste Dean’s blood on his lips. He knew what Sam meant. He refused to answer and stared out of the window. “I have the right to know. He’s my brother.”

“Then I suggest you ask him, Sam, and does this really matter now? He was _dead_.”

“I killed him! I know that! Do you think that I don’t know that! But you… what the fuck, Cas. When did it start? Have you…? Does he…?”

“Do you think your brother will want you asking these things of me, Sam? Stop it.”

They continued in stony silence until they reached the cabin. It didn’t take them long to pack their few belongings. The Impala was covered in a blanket of snow. It took a while to start, but then they drove slowly back to the motel. Dean was waiting for them on a bed, wrapped in a clean towel. Sam bagged his blood soaked clothes and took them to the car. Dean gave Castiel a wan smile. “You okay?” 

Castiel blinked slowly. “How would you be if it had been me?”

Dean sank his head down to his chest. “Yeah.” 

When Sam came back in Dean insisted they both shower and bag their bloody clothes. He would have insisted after any hunt, but that it was _his_ blood that decorated them seemed very wrong. While Castiel was in the shower, Sam called the hospital to be told what they had hoped but hardly dared to ask for: all the back patients had miraculously recovered. JD was claiming that an old bag of goose fat he’d kept around his neck was responsible for his miracle, and the doctors had nothing better to offer him. They called Bobby and updated him on what had happened, leaving out the decapitation and Sam’s role in that. They gave him a description of the witch and left him to circulate it amongst the hunter community. Dean looked at Sam and winked, “You missed, Sam. You’ve gotta practise, yeah? Head clean off next time.”

Sam paled and Dean punched him on the arm. “I’m okay. Tell me what happened when I was… out. How did you reverse the damn spell?”

“Cas did it. Reciting the bible backwards. It wards off evil spirits and can reverse a witch’s spell, but I’ve never heard of it working before. I guess because he’s an angel. And….” He hesitated and held Dean’s gaze. “And because he loves you.”

Dean shrugged. “Just as well he fell for me and not some other righteous fucker. Good to have an angel of the lord on your side.” Sam couldn’t decide whether this was the best bluff he had ever heard or whether he had entirely misconstrued what he had witnessed in that dark, bloody kiss. “We good to go now? I want to leave this frickin’ town and this snow and get back to some home comforts, but don’t tell Bobby I said that.” 

Castiel came out of the shower, and Sam watched him carefully. How could he not? He had seen the man scoop up his brother in his arms - tears streaming down his face as he pleaded with his Father for grace and mercy - and kiss Dean with the passion of a grief-stricken lover. But he had saved Dean’s life. Again. Sam was conflicted and desperate, but he had no one to talk to about his fears. The one source of constancy in his life, the one person he had always been able to talk with was not who he thought he was. Life had just wobbled badly for Sam Winchester. Heartsick and disorientated, he slid into the passenger seat of the Impala and watched with morbid fascination as his brother flicked the driving mirror to see into the back seat and gave the angel a wink.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for commenting and telling me how much you've enjoyed this story. I really do appreciate all the feedback and have tried to answer you all individually.  
> Now.... to the end of the journey.

Castiel woke to warm sunshine streaming in through the huge plate glass windows. He could hear the sea, its relentless crashing on the shore so familiar it was like the heartbeat of their lives. He turned to see if Dean was awake, to find him still wrapped in the sheet, breathing deeply. He grinned and slid down the bed, slipping under the covers. He knew interesting ways to wake him up. 

He could hear the beat of Dean’s heart as he licked down the seductive body. He listened to it for a moment, reassured by its steady beat then eased his mouth further, reaching his goal. In a few moments he felt Dean wake, hands grasp his head, and a warm coppery flavour flood his mouth. He frowned for a moment and wiped a hand across his lips. They came away red. Rearing back he realised it was only a trick of the light. The spill was as it always had been, and he rose up the bed to share it with Dean, kissing deeply into his mouth.

Dean was always happy to return any of Castiel’s favours, so Castiel lay in warmth watching the shafts of sunlight as they streaked through the window and illuminated him. Dean’s skin appeared almost translucent; the feel of his mouth the only reality. 

When he came it was with a surge to match the tide: primal and deep. 

Castiel climbed out of bed and went to the window. He sensed Dean come up behind him and felt a warm embrace. He stood watching the sunlight on the ocean, naked and entwined, until Dean murmured, “Just as well we don’t have neighbours.” Castiel nodded absently, gave Dean a quick kiss and headed for the shower. Dean began to follow him, a meaningful look upon his face. Castiel frowned. “I do not require an audience for this.” 

Over breakfast, Castiel was already thinking about what he wanted to achieve that day. He had brought his characters to a key part of the story and wanted to make the transition to the next smooth and believable, but every time he tried to force them to play their assigned roles they let him down and skittered off on paths of their own like cottontails in the desert. 

“How’s my favourite fallen angel?” Dean poured some more coffee and nodded at Castiel’s notebook. 

“Oh, he’s annoying. He’s fallen in love, and I think he deserves to be happy, but he won’t let me give him the perfect life. He’s fighting back.”

“You talk about him as if he’s real. He’s your character, make him behave.”

Castiel frowned. “He says he’s real and I am an illusion. It’s confusing sometimes.”

“Kill him off. If he goes, we can stay here, can’t we?”

“Hmm. I was thinking more along the lines of them living together, somewhere peaceful and beautiful with lots of sunlight.”

“Like us?”

“Maybe if I threaten to kill Dean he’ll do as I want.”

“You’ve called him Dean? Awesome.”

Castiel frowned. His character wasn’t called Dean - he _was_ Dean. It was confusing. Too confusing to think about so he returned to better thoughts. He wanted to design a house for his angel, but it was hard, every time he planned it, it shifted like sand in his mind, rearranging itself in random patterns. 

Dean rose and nodded toward the beach. “I’m going down to swim. You wanna come?” Castiel knew he couldn’t leave the house so only shrugged. When he looked up, Dean was gone. He seemed to be doing that a lot recently. If he concentrated, he could bring him back, so he closed his eyes and thought about the green of heaven’s leaves, and he was there. He sent him to the garage to work on the car. It was safer for him. Beaches were dangerous. The tide could pull you away into another life. He needed to keep Dean safe.

He rose and stretched. No use having morbid thoughts. He looked around the house, pleased. He’d created this house too. It occasionally shifted, but not as badly as the house in his book. He drifted into the garage, and Dean appeared again, which was good. He was solid enough to play with for a while, which was always fun. He took Dean bent over the hood of an old hunter’s truck, his legs spread wide, his back strong and taking the weight of his need. When he released, he allowed Dean the same pleasure and watched the spill run down the immaculate paintwork of the newly polished Impala. “You’ve been busy. Polishing.”

“You wouldn’t let me polish your sword.”

“You must remember, Dean. I don’t have a sword now. I sold it to pay for this house. I gave up everything for you, so I could bring you here.”

“How will you protect me now?”

Castiel frowned. He disliked Dean like this. This isn’t how he wanted him at all. But since he’d built the house and brought Dean here, he had been like this: weak and whiny. Only babies whine. He wished he could have the Dean in his book. That Dean was a hero. He glared at the man, holding the green gaze until Dean faded. He’d bring him back when he was in a better mood and could force Dean to be more like himself. 

His study was in the basement. It didn’t look much like a study, but he liked it: ordinary Middle America, with its laundry machines and yard tools, and the spill of blood of course. He’d tried to remove the blood, when he’d removed the spare bedrooms. He didn’t want visitors, and he certainly didn’t want blood on the floor. But it was his blood, and somehow when he studied it, it helped him bring Dean into focus. He smiled faintly and did that now, pushing him down upon the floor and taking him roughly. 

He tried to sketch out his next chapter. Writing love was hard, and the angel kept pulling away from him, trying to make up his own dialogue. “Wake up, Cas,” he wrote. But Cas wasn’t asleep, so he deleted this and wrote a scene with Dean instead. He heard knocking and frowned. He’d removed the front door some time ago to prevent just such a thing. He made his way up and recreated it so he could open it. He reared back, surprised. “You can’t come here. You’re not welcome.”

“Hey, Cas. It’s me, Sam.”

“I know who you are. You killed Dean. I had to bring him back and bring him here to keep him safe.”

“Cas, listen to me. You are dreaming. This isn’t real. You were poisoned by the smoke. It has you in its thrall. Do you remember? The fire? The black smoke you inhaled? You have to wake up. I know you think that you’re protecting Dean, and I know you…. Dean needs you to wake up. He got some of the poison too, when you… when you passed it to him. He’s very sick.”

Castiel laughed. “Dean’s fine, Sam. He’s here with me.”

“You’re killing him, Cas. He’s fading. We don’t know what to do. We’ve tried everything we can think of. You have to wake up. Look around you! Does it seem real to you? You have to let Dean go.”

Castiel frowned and looked around as he’d been asked. He removed Sam, and then he removed the front door – just to be sure. That was better. Now it was very real. He summoned Dean, just to check he was safe. He seemed a bit tired and wan, but then he’d had a strenuous day. “Are you hungry? We could have eggs. Don’t put any pepper in though. You don’t like pepper, remember?”

Dean nodded dutifully, and Castiel sighed. Dean didn’t say anything interesting or funny anymore. Dean in his book was always amusing. He had the best lines of all. He went to the window and regarded the desert outside. The sun was setting behind the huge rock formations. They made him feel small and he shivered. He changed it back to the ocean and listened to Dean moving around in the kitchen. The phone rang, which was strange because he had deliberately not allowed a phone in the house. “What do you want? I’m busy.”

“Hey, feathers. You listenin’ to me?”

Castiel held the phone away from his ear. This was bad. This was very bad. This was a voice to wreck dreams, an anchor to reality that he couldn’t ignore. Gingerly, he held the phone away, but the floor was slipping under his feet. He tried to right it, but began to slide toward the window. He changed the ocean to sand and desert so he would not be tempted to go outside. The desert was cold, and Dean was dead, and he didn’t want to go there. “Hey, idjit, you still there?” He’d forgotten the voice on the phone. “Don’t hang up. Just listen.” He heard something being spoken in a language he didn’t understand but could speak quite well. It seemed to be pulling at something inside his body. It was disorientating. Dean was calling from the kitchen. He’d spilt the pepper after all. He was crying and sneezing. Castiel tried to drag himself up from the collapsing floor. Dean needed him. He reached the kitchen and grabbed Dean, shoring him up and trying to stuff raw hamburger into him to give him substance. They were both sliding badly towards the window. Two men were outside on the deck waiting for them and one of them knew. One of them would tell Dean. One of them would make him leave. This was bad. This was very bad. Castiel thought about his fallen angel and the love story he was creating. He thought about how much Castiel loved Dean but could never say because he was limited by the rules of writing: no chick-flick dialogue.

With all his considerable will and strength, with the determination he had forged as heaven’s most fearsome warrior, he made the day new and woke to the feel of Dean sliding down beneath the sheet, and the warmth of his mouth enveloping him. 

All was well once more.

Castiel stretched, luxuriating in the warm bed, but he didn’t like the way Sam was watching him from the other bed. He hadn’t wanted a room with two beds in the first place. How was he supposed to love Dean with his brother always there? And now Sam knew. Sam wasn’t supposed to know. He tried to make Sam go away, but he couldn’t. He was on his laptop, and he turned the screen around to show him what he’d written. Castiel flipped him off. He was sick of being told to wake up. Dean was still busy under the sheet, but it wasn’t very satisfying now. It was all ruined. He turned over but the backseat of the car was cramped and the music was too loud. He groaned and looked up to see his face in the mirror where Dean had twisted it around to wink at him. He reared back. That wasn’t his face. He remembered that face: the red hair made of yarn and the candle flickering. Where had he gone? Where was Castiel? He remembered – Castiel was in the book. He returned to his study where all was calm and safe and began to write. But Castiel was on the cover now and frowning at him. He hadn’t seen Castiel from the outside for a long while. He looked like Jimmy. He could hear the phone ringing again. He locked his gaze with Castiel. The angel looked furious. He was scary when he was angry. Castiel sighed and closed his eyes. He’d let the angel decide his own fate. After all, it was Team Free Will. He opened his eyes and just let the decision go from him. The steely blue eyes narrowed, and the next thing he knew, he was being slapped hard in the face. He sat up with a huge gasp, looked wildly around and vomited into a bucket that was being held in front of him. He tried to speak, but vomited again. 

“Take it easy, Cas. It’s me, Sam. It’s okay. You’re back.”

“Where have I…?” He vomited again, dry heaves now that racked his body. “Where’s Dean?”

“He’s there. He’s fine.” Castiel was finally able to look around. They were in Dean’s bedroom in Sioux Falls. He was sitting on the army cot, Sam with him; and Dean was lying on the bed, Bobby anxiously watching alongside him. 

“What happened? Is he all right?”

Bobby turned from watching Dean. “Maybe you’ll reconsider your stubborn objection to that tattoo now, feathers. Something in that witch’s brew you swallowed put you under some sort of Goddamned spell. You passed out in the car on the way here, and then Dean went down as well. This idjit had to drive for a night an’ a day with you two sleeping beauties alongside him.” 

“But….”

“You had that idjit locked in with you, wherever the hell you were. We tried every damn anti-enchantment spell we knew. An’ I ain’t drinking that damn African Dream Root again, I’ll tell you that for nothing.”

“So how did you free me?”

“Beats me. We were losing you both, then you just sat up and made that damn mess over there.”

Castiel stood up on shaky legs and took Bobby’s place alongside Dean. “You best get a bucket ready if you’re gonna sit there.” Castiel nodded absently. He would not move until Dean opened his eyes.

It took them both a few days to recover from the poison of the burning woollen bodies. Dean had only ingested a tiny amount from the kiss that Castiel had given him, and he did not remember anything. He just knew that he felt like crap and wanted to spit a lot. Castiel was his normal reserved self, but he was badly shaken. This was the first time the enemy had lain within, and although he had defeated it – after all, the enemy had only been his own desires – he knew it had been a close thing. He told no one of his experiences whilst under the spell other than when Dean asked him what _he_ had been like in the dream world, he’d replied, “Bendy,” and left it at that. 

Sam was avoiding him. It made life at Bobby’s more awkward for him than ever. His great awakening as a human was curtailed now. He felt like some mythical creature, chained and bound to a rock, fully aware of all he could be, but condemned to a life of half measures and compromise.

He was restless. He could not have Dean as he wanted him and therefore everything else paled and became stale. One afternoon, when they had managed to snatch an hour together, Dean had lifted his head from where it was resting on the small of Castiel’s naked back and asked, “Sam tell you about his trip to New York?”

He had not. 

Castiel made a non-committal reply and later, when Sam and Bobby returned from town, he sought him out. It was the first time they’d spoken alone since the events in Cranberry Isles. Sam looked up from his laptop for a moment, but then returned to what he had been doing.

Castiel sighed and sat down, waiting patiently. Eventually Sam capitulated, as Castiel had known he would. “What!”

“You are going to New York?”

“He _thinks_ I’m going to meet up with Jennifer in New York. She’s delivering a paper there.”

“But you’re not.”

“I haven’t decided yet. I need to get away for a while, and it seemed the best thing to say.”

“Sam. Don’t do this. You know which of us he would choose, if you force him to make that choice. _I will go_. He needs you here. He’s always needed you, and he always will.”

Sam leant forward and hissed, “But what about me? I can’t stand to look at him. He’s lied to me. What else is he lying about?”

“If I go, then there is nothing for him to lie about. Things will be as they were before I fell. Before you took me in and I destroyed all your lives.”

Sam sat back and shook his head. “It’s not that easy. I need to go. I’ve left it too long already. Shit, do you think I’m dumb? I know what you’re doing the minute I leave you two alone!”

“I sincerely doubt that.” Castiel only meant that most of the time when they were left alone they watched a movie together or just talked, but Sam took it the wrong way and rose swiftly to his feet, his face flushed. 

“You need to tell him I’m in New York or I _will_ make him choose.”

Castiel could see no way around the man’s sense of hurt and betrayal, and he nodded. 

Believing that his brother was only going to be away for a couple of weeks, Dean had the sudden desire to travel somewhere too. He wanted more than the occasional snatched hour alone with Castiel. He suggested a beach, but for some reason the angel paled and shook his head at the suggestion. The desert had the same reaction. Neither of them wanted to go somewhere cold. Frustrated, feeling that the days were being missed, Dean headed out to the Impala one morning to fuel her up to find Castiel hefting two bags into the trunk. Dean came to a halt. “Are we going somewhere?”

Castiel nodded. 

“You gonna tell me where?”

“I don’t know where, Dean. That’s the point. We will just drive. Anywhere. There is much in this world I have not seen and wish to.”

“A road trip?”

“A road trip with no destination. Yes.”

Dean grinned. 

They drove to Nebraska because it was south and seemed like a good idea. Castiel wanted to visit something called Carhenge, which was weird enough to amuse him, and, as he told Dean, he had once carved his name in Enochian on Stonehenge. Dean wasn’t sure whether to believe this or not, but got his own back by taking him to the birthplace of Kool-aid. They continued south because it seemed like going downhill, and Castiel said Dean should see the Prayer Tower. When Dean found out that it had been built by a man called Oral he was impossible to live with, so they drove on, heading for Missouri instead. They visited caves and underground lakes, which fascinated Castiel. He had rarely gone underground as an angel, and when he had it had been to hell. The caves were better. Every night they stayed in motels, in one room with a large bed. They woke when they wanted and slept when they wanted and did other things as well when they wanted. In Illinois, Dean was allowed to visit the Superman museum if he came with Castiel to the world’s biggest cross. At the Historic Auto Attractions, Castiel sent his first text to Sam. It said simply, “Hello, Sam.” He did not get a reply. In Michigan he sent another. “We are in Michigan.” In Detroit he sent, “Dean has brought us to a car show. He misses you.” In Pittsburgh he told him, “Dean misses you and is eating too much.” In Ohio he sent, “Dean said if I allowed him to look at human fingers in a jar I could see the Museum of Divine Statues. I think you would have liked the fingers. I miss you, too.”

After that he texted Sam every day, just random updates on things they were doing - what Dean was doing. He never received a reply. Castiel did not tell Dean of his prayers to Sam – for that is what they were from a fallen angel who had no contact to heaven. Sam was not mentioned between them, and his absence said what words could not. When Dean woke to find Castiel awake, sprawled alongside him early one morning, he asked, “What’ya doing?” and Castiel had replied without thinking about the lie, “I am texting Bobby. He seems to find it amusing that I can, so I am indulging him.” Dean then found more interesting things for Castiel to do while awake, and that amused them both until daybreak. When they reached Charleston, Castiel sent, “Dean wants to see something called the Mystery Hole next week. He seems to find this inappropriately funny. I miss your input.”

When Sam had received the first text from Castiel he’d deleted it before he read it. He didn’t want to think about Castiel, and he particularly didn’t want to think about Dean. And most of, all he didn’t want to think about them together. He wasn’t even sure what he was so angry about. Sometimes he thought it was because Dean had lied to him, and sometimes he thought it was more what he had lied about. In his worst moments it was because he felt a fool: Dean had lied to him about Castiel, and it had happened for months right under his nose. Perhaps when they had even been sharing the same room. So he’d clicked delete on the message and had not felt guilty. But once he’d begun actively not thinking about Dean, it was impossible not to actually _think_ about him. All his life, Sam had put his brother on a pedestal: a big stone one engraved ‘older brother’, ‘hero’, ‘righteous man’. Dean’s lies had destroyed that for Sam, and he took his brother off the pedestal and smashed it to furious pieces in his mind. But then where was Dean to go, now that he was off the pedestal and walking on the ground? Now Dean became just an ordinary man, on the same level as everyone else - someone who needed to live the span of his life as everyone did: seizing happiness and a life worth living. And one day, Sam found himself talking to this new Dean, the one who was on his level, telling him things in his head that he would never have tried to say to the old, unapproachable Dean. Living on the pedestal of other people’s expectations had made that Dean wary of feeling, rigid in his beliefs. So the third time he had a text from the angel, he’d read it, and it told him that Dean missed him. Then Castiel told him that he was missing him too. 

When they arrived at their chosen motel for the planned visit to the Mystery Hole, Dean went to reception to book in. The girl looked at him with a bright smile. “Is it a family reunion?” When he looked suspicious, she added, “I’ve got a Winchester in a single, Eight, and two Winchesters booked into the double next door.” 

He turned and walked slowly across the lot. Castiel was hefting their bags out of the car and followed him. Dean went to Room Eight, and after a hesitation, he knocked. He heard the television being turned off and then movement. Sam opened the door. They stared at each for a moment until Dean said, “Bitch.” 

Sam nodded. “Jerk.” And stood back to let them both in.

None of then could claim later that it was not awkward. It was. Sam had even asked Dean if they’d had good weather. Dean had asked about New York, making stilted conversation that said so much about what wasn’t being said. But then Dean asked, “Hey, you wanna come to the hole tomorrow, Sammy? It’s a _mystery_ hole….” He finished this with a smirk and a wink. Sam frowned, and then he looked at Castiel. Castiel was looking at him with an equally puzzled, fond, despairing, annoyed, can-you-believe-him look; and Sam started to laugh. Castiel smiled too, and in that moment Sam realised that he had not lost his brother at all - he had merely gained someone else who loved him as much as he did, found all the same faults in him that he did, but someone who had managed to put a bond of love around Dean so tight that perhaps, just perhaps, he might survive the life he had been born to; the life up on that damn pedestal: older brother, hero, righteous man. 

 

The End


End file.
